"It was a big thing for us to finish in the top five"
CREW FACTS
M.P.
- Martin Prokop started out in traditional rally and won the Junior WRC title in 2009. He made his full WRC debut at Monte Carlo in 2005 and has since made nearly 150 championship appearances.
- The Jihlava native was drawn to cross-country and made his Dakar debut in 2016, finishing as the second-best rookie in 14th overall.
- Martin is a model of consistency. He has finished the Dakar in each of his nine participations, and always inside the top 25. He has made the top 10 on five occasions and even fulfilled a long-cherished dream by cracking the top five for the first time in 2024, improving his own national record.
- Martin has his own private team - MP-Sports - who are responsible for preparing his Ford Raptor, affectionately nicknamed ‘Shrek’. He drives the team's sister car 'Fiona' in the WRC.
- As well as impressing on the Dakar, Martin has an excellent record at the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge, where he has finished as a runner-up three times (2017, 2022, 2023).
V.C.
- Viktor Chytka jokes that he grew up dreaming of become "a racer or an astronaut", because "that's how it was in the 1980s!"
- His father Marek was heavily involved in the development of cross-country rally in Eastern Europe, organising races in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and Poland. He remains part of the Czech Autoclub committee to this day.
- At 18, Viktor took over the steering wheel from his dad and began racing himself, doing his first Dakar in 2009. Officially a navigator for Jiri Janecek, he ended up driving for the entire rally. His father accompanied him to Dakar 2009 and Dakar 2010 as part of the team media crew.
- His brother Marian is one of the top photographers in motorsport and runs his own agency, MCH Photography. Viktor quips: "My brother is a star, I'm just a hobbyist".
- Viktor was actually taking some photos of Martin when they made a deal to compete together at Dakar 2020. Over the past five years he has also been involved in the development and testing of the car.
2025 AMBITIONS
M.P.: “It's not a completely new car for Dakar 2025, but we have made some changes. The body is a little bit different, which should help with our top speed - we're always struggling with top speed - and we've made some important modifications to the suspension. We're just a small team and it takes a lot of time to change something on the car. It was a big thing for us to finish in the top five last year. And once you get a result like that, it's difficult for the future. My long-term aim is to try to be on the podium, but the competition is always getting stronger and stronger. Now we have Ford and Dacia, and even Mini are back in the game with a petrol engine, so it's not easy. When you walk through the bivouac you see all these top teams with great cars, and you think - 'OK, my project to be in the top 10 will be difficult!'. And we ended up in fifth position. Anything is possible. The Dakar is one of these motorsport events where it's not just about the car. It's about the mistakes you make and how big those mistakes are. It's a challenge for us but it's possible to fight for a good result. You look at the start list and you say, 'No chance!', but in the end you can still play the game.”
V.C.: "Fifth place was our long-term goal. We always want to reach the finish line with the possibility of being in the top 10, but the top 5 was a goal that we thought was almost unrealistic. So the feelings after reaching the finish in 2024 were indescribable. It was like a small victory for us. Our ambitions are the same: to get to the finish line at a constant pace, make as few mistakes as possible and, on the contrary, have as much luck as possible. In the last two years, we also managed to finish the Dakar without a single penalty! The competition at Dakar 2025 will be huge. Ford and Dacia have the highest ambitions and their drivers are undoubtedly up to the task. So the top 30 will be packed again. We only have a small private team with a car that we developed ourselves, a single vehicle in the start list. But we will still try to make life hard for the competition, as we have done so successfully in the past.”
