Brett Cummings savours his new life

Dakar 2021 | Stage 5 | Riyadh > Al Qaisumah
January 7 ^th 2021 - 07:23 [GMT + 3]

Eight years after his last Dakar start on a motorbike and following a five-year break from the rally, South African Brett Cummings is back in the game and fighting for the top places in the car race, in which he serves as co-driver to the young prodigy Henk Lategan.

Fate led Brett Cummings to the Dakar almost a decade ago. A solid biker on the South African circuit, his victory in the Dakar Challenge earned him a ticket for the 2013 edition, which he went on to finish in 43rd place. The next year, he tried his hand at the malles-motos category for bikers racing without support crews, finishing second in the class and 28th overall. However, his job as an engineer for a mining company and the growth of his family kept him away from the competition for several years until an old friend called him in 2019 urging him to navigate for Henk Lategan, a young driver who was already raising eyebrows and turning heads: "Two weeks later, we came in second in our first race together, just a few seconds behind Giniel De Villiers", reminisces Brett. The result proved the huge potential of the new duo, which went on to rack up several victories in the South African championship. Toyota no. 332's performance in the 2021 Dakar was therefore not entirely unexpected. Even so, Brett was not counting on standing on the podium of a Dakar special two days in a row and sitting in fourth place overall in his first outing as a co-driver: "Back in South Africa, the tracks are marked. We have a roadbook and you can still get lost, but this is a different league. There's an incredible number of tracks, canyons… and navigating at this speed is a completely different ball game from riding a motorbike. It took us two days to ease into our routine and, although we still make mistakes, they're increasingly small." At this pace, it will not take long before the duo starts to inconvenience the stars of the category. For now, Brett is savouring his new life: "It feels great to be back at this level and race next to a driver like Henk for a team like ours. It's a world apart from the malles-motos!"