Dakar: Letka Tatra team update 2004-01-05

Tomecek leaving Rally
I've got an unpleasant task to announce to You that the TATRA 548 Crew consisting of Tomas Tomecek, Vojtech Moravek and Michael Tanaka is leaving 27th Telefonica Dakar Ralley because of the serious transmission problems. Said Tomas Tomecek: "At this time the max. speed that the vehicle can go is 60 km/h. We've found that out right before start of the 6th stage. Right now we are in Smara. We are turning back 180 degrees and going back to Europe."

The crew is leaving at the time of their 9th overall position in the truck category. Team's second TATRA (starting number 518) piloted by Brazilian Andre Azevedo is continuing in the race accompanied by Peter Vodak's assistant TATRA.

Problems at 5th stage
I'm sure you are all pretty anxious to hear the news of yesterday's 5. stage where Tomas Tomecek finished in13 th.place roughly 40 minutes back on Tchagin's Kamaz who finished first. What happened? During the stage from Rabat to Agadir Tomas Tomecek's TATRA had problems with the electricity.

From about half of the special stage TATRA had no functioning lights and navigation. The crew had to depend on thein own eyes and navigational skills of Vojta Moravek. Then 100 km from the finish they've got a right front tire flat. The crew had decided not to fix the flat so as not to deepen their already big time loss and instead they've kept re-inflating the tire automatically for the rest of the way. And it was in this way that TATRA with starting number 548 crossed the finish line. Said Tomas Tomecek on the phone next morning: "We've worked on the truck way thgough the midnight and went to sleep only after 3 Am. Even so we where able to remove all the problems. Right now we are getting ready to start the next stage."

Unfortunately even this year I may be somewhat behind on my reports ... after we'll cross the finish line I have to do a maintenance on Azevedo's TATRA which will take some time....so I'm apologizing to you all.

You know we are not giving up and will keep bringing you more actual news from Dakar's Rallye. Keep staying with us !!

Stage 4:
In the middle of 4. stage ( around 4PM) Tomas Tomecek calls us straight from the cabin of his TATRA truck: "We are at the 60th km of today's second stage and before us is the Atlas mountain range. The Special Stage 123 km long went without any problems. The road course was fast and not as beet up as we have expected initially. Vojta Moravek in it's role as a navigator performed excellently. We never got lost once. Olso the technical problems are staying away from us for now."

-lrt-