Hennie de Klerk, South Africa’s DAKAR 2018 Rookie Award champion, has confirmed that he will be competing in the gruelling 2019 race, taking place from 6 – 17 January 2019 in Peru.
Racing under #353, South African Hennie de Klerk was the only South African privateer in the DAKAR Rally 2018 cars category – and next to Toyota´s factory driver Giniel de Villiers, the only South African car.
De Klerk won a free ticket for the 2018 race in the South African “Toyota Kalahari Botswana 1000 Desert Race” together with Achim Bergmann under the label of Dakar Series.
And now he’ll be taking on one of the world’s toughest race again.
“We didn’t think the DAKAR sand bug would bite us again, but we are excited to announce that we have committed to enter DAKAR 2019, and have started preparations in all earnest.
The DAKAR 2019 will span over 5,000 kilometers and will consist of ten stages – seven which are sand and dunes. As dunes are the toughest and most challenging part of the DAKAR, it is also my favourite part, and we will be travelling to Namibia six times to practice in the sand as the Namibian desert offers very similar conditions” Hennie explained.
Five years ago, track racer Hennie started scratching around to learn more about how to actually get up and go do the Dakar. The advice was simple – get involved and climb the cross country racing ladder step by step. And that’s exactly what he did.
Five years later and Hennie found himself at the world’s toughest & biggest rally starting line in position number 54 – a noticeable accomplishment considering it was his 1st DAKAR and he therefore didn’t have an international seeding.
But it’s the fact that Hennie became the first South African to ever win the DAKAR Rookie Award that made headlines this year and if his determination and competitive nature is anything to go by, we know he’ll be making headlines again for the 2019 race.
“During DAKAR 2018 our strategy was to race at 80% of our capacity, as our goal was simply just to finish. It was our dream to finish in the Top 30 and so we were absolutely ecstatic to end 28th overall.
For DAKAR 2019 we will aim first and foremost to complete the race, and then our objective is to improve on the 2018 results, and finish in the Top 20.”
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