The grand finale! Who dominated the Dakar Rally and how did our legionnaires finish?

The twelfth and final stage concludes this year’s 44th edition of the Dakar Rally. Zdeněk Tůma took a beautiful fourth place, while Martin Macík recorded a great result in the last stage. So how did the Czech team finish in Saudi Arabia and who dominated the Dakar Rally?

The final stage took all the competitors to Jeddah on the Red Sea. Zdeněk Tůma, a four-wheeler, recorded an excellent result in this year’s Dakar Rally. The Barth Racing team rider finished the last stage in fourth place, while Tūma also took the same position in the final standings.

However, he lost the overall winner of the quad category, Alexander Giroud, by an abysmal 8 hours. Francisco Moreno finished second, with Poland’s Kamil Wisniewski third. As Tůma himself noted, his goal was to finish in the top five, which he did.

Friday’s final stage among the bikers was won by Monster Energy Honda’s Pablo Quintanilla. However, Sam Sunderland takes the overall win. Martin Michek finished 14th in the final stage and is 36th in the final standings.

The best Czech in the motorcycle category was Jan Brabec, who finished his Dakar Rally career in twenty-third place. Milan Engel finished second in the Original by Motul category, which is for unassisted riders.

“Last year I won a historic result for Czech motorsport, this year I am happy to be at the finish line. I have experienced a lot. At first I was wandering, when I lost an hour, then problems with the cooling, a traffic accident and then a crash on a dune and a destroyed bike,” Michek said in an interview for Czech Television.

“There was 16th place in sight, I was five or six minutes down. I said let’s give it a try, what if we could get a top 15. That didn’t work out in the end. But I’m interested in fighting and racing. That’s what I’m here for,” added Michek after the finish.

The car category was dominated by Qatar’s Nasser al-Attiyah. It should be noted that this is his fourth overall victory in the Dakar Rally. Second place went to nine-time WRC champion Sébastien Loeb, who lost over 27 minutes to the winner.

Martin Prokop finished the last stage in 13th place, the Jihlava native is 25th overall. Miroslav Zapletal is one position ahead of him in the results list.

“We were hoping for top ten, we were also in the fight for top five. But Shrek stopped more than we wanted. We fought back, we are at the finish line, which is also a difficult task. It wasn’t the prettiest Dakar, but it was the fastest. It was crazy and our car was definitely not ready for it. We need to improve and have a better car so we don’t cry all the time that it doesn’t go faster,” Prokop said in an interview with Czech Television.

Throughout the Dakar Rally, the truck category was dominated by the Russians, led by Dmitry Sotnikov. The Kamaz – Master team driver dominated the race with a ten-minute lead over second-placed Eduard Nikolaev.

Third in the results list is Anton Shibalov, fourth place was taken by Andrey Karginov. Martin Macík takes seventh place overall, with a very solid result in the last stage. In the twelfth stage he finished second, which is the best daily result of the Czechs at this year’s Dakar!

Ales Loprais finished ninth on Friday and is now 20th overall. Josef Macháček was twenty-second in the lightweight prototypes and finished eleventh in the last stage, 22 and a half minutes behind the winner Seth Quintero. However, Francisco Lopez Contardo dominated the light prototypes.

Sources