“Harder than we thought, better than we expected”

Vaidotas Paskevicius, Slavomir Volkov and Tomas Guzauskas made history at the 2022 Dakar by being the first crew from Lithuania to take part in the truck class. All born in 1985, they made their debut with the support of Tomas Vratny's Fesh Fesh team, who also provided them with a tried-and-tested Tatra Jamal. Powered by a 13-litre Renault engine, the Czech-made juggernaut had already completed the Dakar seven times and while obviously solid, isn’t exactly at the cutting edge of race truck technology. Vaidotas was optimistically hoping to do get into the top 15 -and that was before he realized quite how hard the race actually was! In the end the 36-year-old multiply Lithuanian off-road champion and his crew got up to a highly respectable 10th place before losing 2 places right at the end to finish 12th! Bitten by the bug the same trio are back for 2023 determined to stay in the top 10 all the way to the finish. They’ve made a few modifications to the vehicle they’ve nicknamed ‘Mamba’ but they know they’ll have their work cut out challenging their better equipped rivals.

V.P.: “We were really pleased with last year’s result. Before we started we were hoping to get into the top 15 but when we said that we had no idea how hard the Dakar was -and it was a lot harder than we imagined! Plus, while our truck is very strong she’s starting to show its age. De Rooy’s trucks or those of Martin Macik weigh close to the 8 tones FIA limit. Our Tatra weighs more like 9.5 tones! Still we are really looking forward to the challenge. Although the 2022 Dakar was really a tough debut there was never an angry word said between the three of us. We just laughed and joked from the start to finish. And whatever happens this year we plan to do the same.”