SA team crack Dakar dream
TOP ROOKIES: DE KLERK, SCHUTTE STAR IN LOCALLY BUILT TREASURYONE AMAROK
Only 43 of 95 cars that started the rally finished and only two of 16 rookies made it.
Officially, the most successful South African team in this year’s Dakar Rally finished a long way behind the event’s overall leaders, but they managed to score a remarkable accolade.
In finishing 28th overall, South African duo Hennie de Klerk and Gerhard Schutte took their locally built TreasuryOne Amarok home to victory in the Dakar 2018 Rookie category. The Pretoria crew was ecstatic as they mounted the finishing ramp in Cordoba, Argentina, in an incredible culmination of a five-year dream.
Former track racer De Klerk sought advice on how he should go about tackling the Dakar and was told to race the local cross country championship, which he did. He looked, learnt, gained experience and last year built the TreasuryOne Amarok. The Ford V8-powered machine was conceived with one mission in mind – to finish the Dakar.
In June last year, De Klerk won the Dakar Challenge award in the Toyota 1000 Desert Race through Botswana. The prize covered the Dakar entry fee and the cost of getting the Amarok to and from South America to compete.
De Klerk teamed up with a formidable co-driver in Gerhard Schutte. The TreasuryOne’s team’s objective was simple — to reach the finish at Cordoba.
Their trials and tribulations over the two-week race are too many to list here, but they started out 34th overall and stayed thereabouts, despite once spending 10 hours fixing a broken suspension component in the desert, plus a crash with a quad bike hidden behind a dune.
They held and lost the rookie category lead on various occasions, but finally took the lead on the penultimate day and held it to the finish. Only 43 of the 95 cars that started Dakar 2018 finished and only two of the 16 rookies made it. “I am lost for words,” De Klerk said. “The Dakar has been an astounding experience. An absolute test of man and machine across the toughest terrain in the world – and we have overcome it.”