Kamaz-Master has notched up yet another Dakar victory. Last Friday, the team finished in first and second place in the Dakar 2020 after 12 challenging stages, winning the famous rally for the 17th time. As official tyre partner to Kamaz-Master, Goodyear is particularly pleased with the result.
Yokohama’s Geolandar M/T G003 tyres for SUVs and pickup trucks will be fitted to the Korando DKR driven by Oscar Fuertes Aldanondo and Diego Vallejo for Ssangyong Motorsport/Sodicars Racing on the 2020 Dakar Rally (5-17 January). The same car and drivers came in third in the T1.3 petrol 2-wheel drive class in the January 2019 event, and will take on competition in the same class this year.
Goodyear will be the official tyre supplier to two top teams in the upcoming Dakar Rally. The rally returns to its roots in the desert on 5 January in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, and the shift to a new continent presents new challenges to tyre suppliers, drivers and vehicles. The 2020 rally will run over sand dunes, rocky canyons and wadis or dry riverbeds, all on standard truck tyres. Goodyear has a strong record on the rally in recent years, with Petronas De Rooy Iveco occupying podium places, including two first places, with Goodyear as their tyre and development partner.
On Saturday, Eduard Nikolaev’s crew from the KAMAZ-Master team crossed the Dakar Rally 2018 finish line in Cordoba, Argentina to take first place in the event’s truck category. The crew finished nearly four hours ahead of the nearest competition, having completed the rally’s 14 stages in 54 hours, 57 minutes and 37 seconds. Although KAMAZ-Master failed to replicate the one-two finish it secured in the truck category last year, it ended proceedings in the 40th anniversary event with another win for Nikolaev and a third-place finish for Airat Mardeev and his Kamaz-Master crew.
The Dakar Rally begins in Peru on Saturday, and Yokohama Tire shares that it is sponsoring Ssanyong Motorsport’s entry in this year’s event. It will supply the SsangYong Motorsport Tivoli DKR vehicle with Yokohama Geolandar M/T G003 mud-terrain tyres.
Cooper Tire 4×4 ambassador Xavi Foj is preparing to enter his 28th consecutive Dakar Rally – the tenth he has competed on Cooper tyres. For the 2018 rally, Foj’s Toyota Land Cruiser 150 will be shod with the all-new Cooper Discoverer S/TMAXX POR – a tyre he assisted in developing for extreme off-road adventures.
In order to build on its successful performance during the 2017 Dakar, BFGoodrich has prepared for the next edition of the world’s most demanding cross-country rally by developing a bespoke new tyre: the BFGoodrich All-Terrain T/A KDR2+.
Three days, four hours and 54 minutes – this is the time Rainer Zietlow and his team took to drive their Goodyear-shod Volkswagen Amarok V6 TDI from Dakar to Moscow. Zietlow, together with Russian blogger Peter Bakanov and journalist Georgy Gloube, arrived in the Russian capital shortly before 10am on 25 April, having passed through ten countries as they covered 7,995 kilometres (4968 miles) in record time.
Last month the KAMAZ-Master rally team not only secured a one-two win in the truck category at the Dakar Rally 2017, it was also victorious in the truck section of the Africa Eco Race. Tyre maker Continental states that these two rallies “marked the beginning of a product cooperation” between it and the Russian KAMAZ-Master team. As part of this cooperation, Continental tyres were fitted on the KAMAZ-Master race trucks and all support trucks.
Despite leading the event for several stages and successfully battling terrible conditions, Team De Rooy had to settle for third and fourth places in the truck category of the 2017 Dakar. Driving Iveco Powerstar 4X4s equipped with standard Goodyear ORD tyres, Dutchman Gerard De Rooy in truck #500 and Argentinian Federico Villagra in truck #502 covered 5,300 miles of the challenging terrain, finishing close behind the two Russian Kamaz trucks. The remaining two Team De Rooy trucks finished 16th and 17th out of the 50 trucks that entered.
The 2017 Dakar Rally finished on January 14, and Peugeot Sport and BFGoodrich – which returned to the world’s most famous cross-country rally after a four-year absence – monopolised the podium following the two-week event’s conclusion in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Cooper Tire Europe will support its ambassador Xavier Foj, supplying Discoverer STT Pro tyres to Foj Motorsport for his 27th Dakar Rally. The Foj Motorsport Cooper Tire team has completed a series of rigorous test sessions in the run up to what is considered the toughest endurance event in global motorsport, taking place on 2-14 January 2017 in Paraguay, Argentina and Bolivia.
In 2016 Cooper Tire continued to support the World Rallycross Championship and European Rallycross, also providing tyres to Dakar Rally veteran Xavier Foj, who has taken on the challenge an impressive 26 times. Meanwhile, Avon Tyres burnished its reputation as master of classic motorcycle race tyres, underlined in the Isle of Man this year with victories for Avon in both the Senior and Junior Classic TT races, for John McGuinness and Michael Dunlop respectively.
The De Rooy team, winner of the 2016 Dakar rally truck class, is returning to defend its crown on Goodyear Offroad ORD tyres. Gerard De Rooy and his team chose the tyre for its four race trucks as well as fitting Goodyear Omnitrac mixed service tyres to their service trucks. The team will target a repeat success with the support of the tyre manufacturer, which will provide testing and back-up.
BFGoodrich Tyres will return to the 2017 Dakar Rally as the official tyre supplier. The news marks a return of the brand as a major force in the rally, which starts in Asunción, Paraguay in January; BFGoodrich tyres will be back on a wide range of competitors’ vehicles for the first time since 2012. In support of this, the brand will roll out the BFGoodrich Dakar Service Center, through which competitors will benefit from 24/7 technical expertise. The rugged terrain and unpredictable elements racers face over two weeks and more than 5,000 miles of punishing competition across three countries is described as exactly the sort of proving ground BFGoodrich seeks. The brand that created the first radial all-terrain tyre in 1976 and has since claimed many off-road racing victories around the globe will equip roughly 300 vehicles at Dakar with race tyres designed and constructed to withstand the punishment of the terrain.