Excellent Michek, Pabiška had to go to hospital: how are the Czechs doing at the Dakar Rally?

The legendary Dakar Rally continues with the fourth stage and the best of the Czechs is still Aleš Loprais. On the other hand, David Pabiška suffered a crash after which he had to be transported to hospital. So how are the Czechs doing in the Dakar at the moment?

Martin Michek, who finished ninth in the longest stage (465 kilometres, ed.) of this rally and is now 21st in the overall standings, performed an excellent performance in the fourth stage.

At the finish he was initially eleventh in the standings, but thanks to further penalties for other drivers he moved up to ninth place. It should be noted that Michek has been in increasing form at the Dakar, which is only good for the native of České Budějovice.

After finishing, he admitted that it was a very difficult and long stage, with several times reaching a top speed of 165 km/h.

Another Czech, Milan Engel, finished in thirty-second position on stage four. Jan Brabec is seven positions higher in the results. Unfortunately, David Pabiška, whose journey in Saudi Arabia came to an early end, did not see the finish.

After a bad fall he was taken to the hospital and according to the latest information it seems that only his ribs and crank were affected.

Martin Prokop, who races in the car category, received a seven-minute penalty at the finish and because of that he was only 24th in the standings. Overall, he dropped to tenth place. The fourth stage was won by Qatar’s Al-Attiyah ahead of France’s Sébastien Loeb and Spain’s Carlos Sainz.

“It was an interesting stage and especially after the start it was extremely fast. We survived one difficult moment when we went off the track, which threw us into huge holes and made a big difference. Then we were very careful and it was visible on the pace,” said Prokop after the finish.

Looking at the quad category, Zdeněk Tůma finished seventh in the standings and thanks to this performance he moved up to eighth overall. The best of all Czechs is still Ales Loprais, who is still fifth overall in the truck category.

However, he finished the fourth stage in sixth position, 16 minutes and 37 seconds behind the race winner. It was Russian Nikolaev who managed this stage the best of all. Another Russian, Anton Shibalov, is second on the results list, while third place also belongs to their compatriot Dmitry Sotnikov.

Sources:: Dakar Rally, Twitter