Another disaster for the Czech expedition: Michek suffered a big blow and took a huge loss. How are the others doing?

The eleventh stage of the Dakar Rally is behind us and Thursday’s performance brought one very negative news for the Czech team. Martin Michek took a hard hit and took a huge loss, but Martin Macík rode solidly. So what did the next day of the Dakar Rally bring?

On Wednesday it was Ales Loprais and Martin Prokop who were stuck in the desert for long hours, while Michek had big problems in Thursday’s stage. The former was not even supposed to continue, but thanks to the service team, they managed to get his truck to the bivouac, where the mechanics worked on it all night.

However, he was penalized 24 hours and now it will be just a matter of finishing the Dakar Rally with honour. Michek destroyed the rim of his front wheel on the 127th kilometre after a hard jump and spent four hours in the desert.

“I was pushing hard today. I wanted to get further ahead, I was having a good time. Ricky Brabec and I were pulling each other like dogs, he was a bit far away from me. So I wanted to catch him on the flat. But there was a dune that I didn’t notice, and then a cliff behind it and it sent me off into the distance. It was a crazy blow,” explained Michek on Instagram, whose words are also quoted by Sport.cz.

“I didn’t fall, but my rim was destroyed. I can’t drive it because I would kill myself,” he added. He was only able to continue the race thanks to the heroic act of a pair of Ecuadorian riders – Juan Puga donated one of his bikes to Michek.

Michek did reach the finish line, but with a truly significant loss of four and a half hours. In the overall standings, the Czech racer dropped to number 37. Milan Engel is currently in thirtieth place, while Jan Brabec, who finished Thursday’s stage as thirty-seventh in the standings, is 24th.

The biggest success of our legionnaires was recorded by Martin Macík, who finished in an excellent fourth place. However, the top three places were again occupied by Russian stars – Nikolaev, Karginov and Sotnikov, the latter still leading the truck category.

Loprais finished seventh on stage 11, but dropped from fourth to eighteenth overall due to a penalty and Wednesday’s big loss.

Prokop’s car has also been worked on extensively. In the end, the Jihlava native finished twentieth in this stage, nineteen minutes and 21 seconds behind the winner Carlos Sainz. Sébastien Loeb is slowly closing the gap he has on the overall leader, who is still Nasser al-Attiyah. The current gap is twenty-eight minutes.

Zdeněk Tůma, a quadriplegic, ended his stint in the eleventh stage in fifth position and holds fourth place overall.

Sources:: Rallye Dakar, Sport.cz, Twitter