“Not the cheapest dream to realise”

Although Romania has had some notable motorcycle competitors on the Dakar they haven’t been over represented in the car class. That’s something Mihai Ban and Stefan Catalin Ion intend to put right. Mihai used to race quads and won some national championships before a few too many accidents inspired him to switch to cars. His co-driver is better known back home as Cheloo and is one of the country’s biggest rap stars and part of the famous Parazitii group. Maybe not surprising therefore that they have chosen to enter the Dakar in a Hummer rather than an SSV, all be it one with a Toyota engine and built by the same garage that produced Martin Prokop’s Ford. The car, that they bought from nine times Dakar finisher Tomas Ourednicek, has already been entered twice on the Dakar in South America. By way of preparation they’ve raced the Hungarian and Polish Bajas and this year’s Rallye du Maroc which they DNFed ‘thanks’ to a broken engine.

“It has always been my dream to race the Dakar. I’ve broken too many bones to do it on a quad and I’m not interested in SSVs so it had to be a car. It is maybe not the cheapest dream to realise and my family are ‘surprised’ how much it costs. Our only ambition is to finish and if our friends and teammates from the Transilvania Rally Team, Iacob Buhai and Tudor Turdean can also finish then we will be super happy. Then if everything goes well maybe the following year we will come back in a truck…”