Henk Lategan: “It’s a fine balance, you can either be quick or you can be nowhere”

Dakar 2025 | Prologue | BISHA > BISHA
January 3 ^rd 2025 - 11:43 [GMT + 3]

The South African official Toyota Gazoo Racing driver has made a striking return to the Dakar! Lategan was absent from the rally last year after 5th place on the 2023 edition.

“It wasn’t a perfect drive, we made a few mistakes here and there, but it was a good stage. We had a good rhythm quite early on. It was really short. Usually, I struggle to get going on the short stages. I need about twenty kilometres to warm up, but we knew this was quite important for the road position on the first stage, so we pushed a little bit. The terrain was really tricky. The pace is so high, it’s such high speeds and there were a lot of really narrow spots where if you get it right you can go through really quickly but if you get it wrong it can go really wrong. It can take a wheel off or get a puncture or something. It’s a fine balance, you can either be quick or you can be nowhere”.