Macík has a Bedouin from Dakar, finishes second. Prokop equaled his maximum

While in other categories it has been more or less decided for a few days, in motorcycles it was drama until the last kilometers. However, Kevin Benavides gradually overtook his teammate Toby Price in Sunday’s stage and won the Dakar triumph.

Erzeta won, Price was third with a loss of 55 seconds and after almost 4,500 kilometers there is an incomprehensible and insignificant difference of 43 seconds between them.

Martin Michek finished eleventh overall, his second best result at the Dakar. Two years ago he was tenth. In addition, this year he is the first rider in the standings who does not have the support of the factory team. “Dakar ended with a great result for us, the eleventh place is close. This year was really very hard. I pushed as hard as I could. I’m crazy, because sometimes I took risks and over my head in some situations. I’m really glad that I he survived and reached his destination,” said Michek.

Jan Brabec finished this year 31st, which is the second best result in his sixth start. David Pabiška finished 36th, being fourth among unassisted drivers.

In the car category, Násir al-Attíja took a big lead, defending last year’s triumph and overall winning the Dakar for the fifth time. He is also an Olympic medalist in shooting. The decisive distance was gained by the Qatari in the first week of the rally, when Sébastien Loeb had to deal with a number of technical problems, in addition, Stéphane Peterhansel and Carlos Sainz finished after accidents.

Loeb is finally second with a loss of one hour and 19 minutes.

On Sunday, Martin Prokop lost seven minutes to the Frenchman Chicherit, the winner of the stage, but safely defended his sixth position overall. This equals his 2019 high.

“The location is amazing. It was the longest and hardest Dakar in Saudi Arabia. The stages were beautifully mixed, none of them were overpasses, which is a great experience,” said Prokop, choosing his three key moments of the race. “In the second stage, a lot of people made mistakes, we didn’t, so we got into the top ten, which we kept . Then there were five mentally demanding stages at high altitude, where we were losing, but there was nothing we could do about it. But we persevered. And finally the penultimate stage, when we finished with a broken differential. That was very emotional. We will try again next time move somewhere.”

In trucks, after the sad resignation of Aleš Loprais on Wednesday, the Dutchman Janus van Kasteren did not let the victory take him. Martin Macík finished second, and thanks to him, the Czechia wins the Bedouin, i.e. the Dakar award for the top three. In 2007, Aleš Loprais took care of the last Czech position among the top three in the listed main categories, who was also third among trucks.

“In the last stage we were sliding left and right on the mud. It was the toughest Dakar in Saudi Arabia. We will try to improve it again next year,” said Macík.

He and his team experienced slight nerves in the end, because in the official results he was given an unprecedented penalty of 48 hours. However, it was a technical error, as Macík received a two-minute penalty, which did not affect the final results.

Jaroslav Valtr also took the same penalty, which deprived him of the triumph in the final act. He is fifth overall, Martin Šoltys sixth and Tomáš Vrátný ninth.

This year’s 45th edition of the Dakar was affected by the non-participation of the Russian factory team Kamaz in trucks as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. His pilots have occupied leading positions in recent years, winning the previous six years of the rally and eighteen since 2000.