Robby Gordon: "It's good to be back in the Dakar"

January 6 ^th 2019 - 19:26

The American, back in the Dakar after a three-year absence, finally went through scrutineering after a few maddening days due to the ship that carried his car from the United States falling behind schedule. However, it takes far more than that to rattle the ambitious comeback kid, who feels ready to take the fight to Mini and Toyota despite the small build of his Textron.

"It's good to be back in the Dakar. I've been busy building the manufacturer car, and that's taken a lot of our time, and we didn't really have the time to be able to do it. But now the car is out. we've released it to the general public, and we're able to come here and bring a car and compete against the car category with our new car that is sold to the general public, which is very cool.

I didn't get my car until yesterday in the morning, and then we didn't get the truck until late last night. So... Problems with shipping because we don't come on the ASO boat, you know. Getting the boat into the port... The port sat in the port for eight days and didn't come to dock. That was a bummer.

The crazy thing, if you look at [the car], it's no smaller than the Mini. It's actually quite bigger than the Mini. It's the future of motor sports, with the off-road industry... being able to purchase cars and go race them.

We think we're OK, but to be honest I won't know until tomorrow. [Tomorrow] is only 50 miles, 88 k, but it'll at least give us an idea of how we stack up against the competition. Everything could be possible, we could be in really good shape."