Rainbow Truck Workforce will rejoice its ten-year anniversary by forgoing the Dakar Rally in Saudi Arabia in favour of the ‘actual’ Dakar rally: the Africa Eco Race.
On the 2024 Dakar in January, Gerrit Zuurmond completed fifteenth within the Truck class. Driving a MAN TGA with Tjeerd van Ballegooy and Klaas Kwakkel as co-driver and mechanic, he and the group raced pretty conservatively early on to remain out of hassle earlier than being pressured to retire throughout the Chrono Stage. The group additionally fielded a hydrogen-powered Volkswagen Amarok in Mission 1000 for Zuurmond’s brother Dick and Simon Koetsier, who completed seventh after being set again by the hydrogen gasoline cell being indifferent throughout the center phases.
“Buddy and foe alike will agree that Africa is the cradle of off-road rally. This was the place Thierry Sabine began an unprecedented journey underneath the title ‘Paris–Dakar’ in 1979, the place the Africa Eco Race has been going down for years,” begins an announcement from the group.
“In 2009, rally veterans René Metge and Jean-Louis Schlesser organised for the primary time a rally that adopted the ‘outdated’ African route of the Paris–Dakar. Whereas the massive industrial Dakar circus sought its refuge in South America, the Africa Eco Race advanced into the rally most pushed within the spirit of Thierry Sabine. Ending at Lac Rose in significantly is one thing that many rally raid contributors need to expertise at the least as soon as.
“Rainbow Truck Workforce needs to make its anniversary yr one thing particular and the way great wouldn’t it be to tackle the problem in Africa.”
To arrange for the AER, the group will enter the Rallye du Maroc in October. A spherical of the World Rally-Raid Championship just like the Dakar Rally, the occasion takes place in Morocco, one of many AER’s host international locations. Zuurmond completed second within the Truck class on the 2023 version.
Based in 2014, Rainbow Truck Workforce might be amongst a handful of Dutch truck outfits on the AER that embody Rally Workforce Mud Warriors and Truck Workforce Müller. The latter had competed completely in Europe earlier than making their desert rally début on the Moroccan Carta Rallye in March.
The 2025 Africa Eco Race will run from 28 December 2024 to 12 January 2025. Tomáš Tomeček, one other Dakar Rally alumnus, received the 2024 version for vans.
