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On the first day of Christmas, two days before the flight to Saudi Arabia, it became clear that two mechanics from Agrorodeo, Darius Biesevičius and Edvardas Lucevičius, were infected with the COVID-19 virus. In other words, the team has lost the foundation of technical support, without which, in theory, no endurance race can be successful. Dakar in particular, where non-standard solutions are often needed in the field. That is why mechanics-creators who have a solid background of engineering knowledge and are capable of getting out of the most desperate situations travel to this marathon. Kristaps Ulmis suddenly became the team’s savior, so the iGo2Dakar project decided to learn more about him.
“Kristaps has been mechanizing in motorsports for more than 20 years, during which time he climbed to the highest professional heights. He worked for Andris Dambis, the team that developed the OSCar SUVs, and worked on three Dakar and several other endurance races in Africa. For the last four years Kristaps has worked in the WRX (World Rally Cross Championship) factory teams: in 2017 he oversaw the Rhine Nitiš car, in 2018 he became Andreas Bakerud’s second mechanic, and since 2019 he was the mechanic EKS RX team leader from Mattias Ekström. T. and. basically he worked in a factory team. It’s really great cold – In Latvia, an engineer of this level can be counted on the fingers of one hand. He was approached by people who bought the most exotic cars of every day, when the team started showing fashions, ”he introduced his colleague Viesturs Kundzins, former head of communication at EKS RX.
According to the Latvian portal Go4speed, which presents all the most important motorsport news, after learning about the difficult situation of Vaidotas Injury, his friend Artūras Priednieks from Race Transport Solutions offered him a solution. He contacted Kristaps on the night of December 25, discussed the terms of the cooperation in a couple of hours, and the next morning the rescuer from Agrorodeo Racing was already in Vilnius and took the COVID-19 test.
“I have experienced many things in my life, but about 24 hours before boarding a plane, getting an offer to go to the Dakar Rally is really, to put it mildly,” Ulmis himself admitted to Go4speed.
He also said that after the first three Dakar trips on the African continent, he had managed to taste the flavors of probably every possible race in the desert, from grueling fatigue, sleep deficits, overnight tents under less pressure, to euphoria afterwards. to solve difficult problems.
“When Dakar moved to South America and last year to Saudi Arabia, I had started to think about wanting to dive into that adventure again. So this Christmas offer is a real dream come true,” opens K. Ulmis.
When asked how difficult it is to “switch” to an entirely different motorsports discipline, Kristaps hoped that while the Mini SUV was new to him, in a sense everything combat the machines are similar. In addition, the Agrorodeo Racing elders were quick to provide him with information on specific care to be taken during daily off-road inspections. This will take advantage of all the time before departure, so there should be no big surprises.
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