“I'm in a factory car that's driven by the best in the world”
Crew facts
MP
- Martin Prokop is gearing up for his 11th consecutive Dakar in the Ultimate class, a decade after finishing as the second-best rookie on his 2016 debut. Remarkably, the Czech driver has never failed to finish, securing six top-10s and going as high as fifth (a national record) in 2024.
- After 10 years of racing in 'Shrek' -a Ford Raptor prepared by his own private team MP-Sports- Martin has done a deal with Ford and M-Sport for Dakar 2026. He remains a privateer but will be getting behind the wheel of the factory Ford Raptor T1+, the same car that Mattias Ekstrom guided to third place overall at Dakar 2025.
- Martin and navigator Viktor Chytka have done three Bajas in the new car since their deal with Ford was announced in June, in Aragon (6th), Qatar (2nd) and Dubai (4th).
- The 43-year-old from Jihlava 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 around 150 championship appearances. In 2025 he finished just outside the Top 10 at the Rally Italia Sardegna and the Acropolis Rally.
- As well as impressing on the Dakar, Martin has a fine record at the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge, where he has finished as a runner-up three times (2017, 2022, 2023).
VC
- Viktor Chytka is gearing up for his seventh straight Dakar as Martin Prokop's navigator, and his 10th in total.
- The 41-year-old jokes that he grew up dreaming of becoming 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,
- 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 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.
Ambition
M.P.: “We have a new car, the original version of the Ford Raptor T1+. Everyone thinks that if you have the best car on the market, you will go at the same speed as Mattias Ekstrom, who drove it last year. But the car doesn't go fast by itself. You have to push it and it's happy to let you. The big difference between the car I've had for the last 10 years and this new project is that you can push the Raptor much more. But if you want to have good speed, you have to really go over your limit, and that's a problem for my head! You have to find the balance, especially at a 14-day race like the Dakar. You don't want to push too much, but you can't be too relaxed either. The problem is that the Raptor is so nice to drive that even when you're going slow, it feels good. It's really a big motivation for me. It's incredible to have your own homemade project and build your own racecar from scratch. But we always struggled a bit with technical issues or we were behind in development. You can't fight with factory teams that have five or 10 drivers. I was always alone, so it was just my opinion on the setup and technical decisions. Now I'm in a factory car that's driven by the best in the world. So you can discuss the setups, the driving style, see the data from the best drivers.
We were fifth at Dakar 2024 and the podium wasn't so far off. Over the years the competition has become much stronger, and the start list now is incredible. It's not easy, but my ambitions haven't changed. We came fifth before, so now we would like to be in the top four, let's see if we will be allowed to! Until the end of the second week, you have no idea where you can finish. You can dream about something, but the finish line shows you the reality.”
V.C.: “We are just learning. We have done three races in the new car: Baja Spain was flat out, Qatar was quite good for navigation training, and Dubai was for learning the car in the small dunes and camel grass. It's working very well, but we are still slow. We need to push much more, much harder. Because as we've seen, the other guys are flat out all the time. It's not easy. The car is still much faster than us, so we need to make a proper step-up. In 2024 we reached fifth position, and we got another Top 10 last year in our old car, we had to be pretty happy with that. But now we've got a factory car, so we need to be even better!”
