Dakar 2025 Stage 12 - Henk Lategan

Transcript

00:00It was a very interesting start. Four cars pulled up next to each other and then set off at the same time.

00:06We were a little bit slow off the line maybe, so we ended up third into the first corner.

00:11Then Nasser was extremely quick once we got into the dunes and we were a little bit behind

00:16and we managed to catch Matthias in front of us and overtake him in one spot.

00:20That was quite nice. We had a nice little battle with him.

00:23We managed to come across the line second in our little group.

00:27It was great. A lot of fun. We enjoyed the stage.

00:31Like you say, bittersweet end to the race.

00:34To come all of this way, to do two weeks of racing, thousands of kilometres, late nights, early mornings,

00:41really, really early mornings this year, and then miss out by four minutes is a bit bittersweet.

00:49But to get onto the podium, it's our first podium, is also a great achievement.

00:54It's amazing what the team has done and what we could manage with this race.

00:59I'm proud of what we did. I think we did try. It was not from a lack of trying.

01:06Even today we were pushing a bit and we managed to take back some time, but the stage was just not long enough.

01:12We'll keep trying, we'll keep pushing this year, we'll improve the car, we'll improve ourselves,

01:17we'll gain more experience and we'll come back stronger next year.

01:20The car has been unbelievable. I think the Hilux was the one to be in this year.

01:26You could see when the race got seriously tough and the stages got really, really rough,

01:30the Hilux has started rising to the top. They are extremely tough things, a proven car.

01:36They've done amazing. The team has also done an amazing job keeping the car going.

01:42It hasn't missed a beat. It just kept going all this way.

01:46If you think about what we've gone through with this car, it's unbelievable that it looks like this.