Slight correction, it was the the second truck of the De Rooy team that crashed hard during that stage, sadly the effects were the same. According to a documentary, the story is that the crew of the second truck had overslept, and thus missed the starting session. Since they had a back-up role, they tried to make up…

Yeah, and this isn’t even full speed. I can imagine going at it at full speed, and for a whole day to be heavy on the stomach. Adding high altitudes and high temperatures, and you have exactly the explanation why a lot of (Co)-Drivers get sick during the Dakar.

Yep riding in a Dakar truck is quite harsh, but quite fun at the same time. I once had the opportunity to ride along in the Iveco truck of double Dakar winner Gerard de Rooy (son of Dakar legend Jan de Rooy) with Ton van Genugten at the wheel. And while it only was a demonstration lap at a lower speed, I was still…

SCIENCE! Never thought about this, but it makes sense in the whole light is a particle view.

The way the engines are packaged reminds me of how Jan de Rooy packaged his engines in the Daf Turbo Twin Dakar trucks about 40-ish years later:

I thought we were friends For Sweden! Not all Dutch millennials are bad...

I can get why people want to take their oddities on the ‘Ring, nothing beats driving around it in your own car, as I found out a few weeks back:

The Twingo II is hardly a snoozefest, the combination of it having rather stiff springs from the factory, only weighing 840-ish kgs, and having a shorter wheelbase than the Note/Clio give it pretty sharp handling. It’s handling is somewhat similar to a Fiesta, which is good seeing it is a way cheaper and smaller car.

Twingos are very effective Nürburgring tools too! Look at it go. (Yes, this is me, during the Europpomeet last weekend I tackled the ‘ring together with about 18 other Opponauts.)

Damn that driver has a health dose of skills, paired with quite some luck.

Ford should just give you one, for being the biggest GT(40) fan around. I’m sure they can miss one!

Because marketing probably.

Thanks, but to be honest I go to university in the city where they are built(Eindhoven, the Netherlands), so I tend to see tons of them, from every possible angle.

That would be a valid point for stuff as the tent and such, but why would they take a giant statue of Clarkson around the world with them?

That truck looks to be a European spec Daf CF(As far as I know the LF is the only Daf design being sold in the USA), judging by the mirrors it’s even right hand drive. Which kinda odd, why ship a truck to the USA, while you can just ship it’s contents?

Awesome pictures! But that isn’t that hard with how beautiful the Alps are. I haven’t been to Austria for a few years now, but seeing this, I think I should change that next year by driving all the passes.

Couldn’t that have to do with the eco-tuning of the ECU? My dad used to have a 115 hp Focus TDCi wagon (2012) and that felt pretty powerful on the highway, maybe they’ve taken out some torque to meet the 14% category? The 115 hp version felt way more powerful than the 308 sw he now has, although that one has 120 hp…

I was once helping with the shooting of a promotion movie, in which both a 500 twinair and a Maserati Ghibli Q4 featured. At the end of the day both the Maserati and 500 used about the same amount of fuel (to be honest we babied the Maserati and hooned the 500, because nobody cared about it and the Maserati was signed…

This is gold!