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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 Racing, 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. Kristapas Ulmis unexpectedly became the team’s savior, so the # iGo2Dakar project decided to learn more about him, the young Latvian prodigy.
“Kristapas is one of those people. He’s still a young kid, but he’s been mechanizing motorsport for over 20 years, during which time he climbed to perhaps the highest professional heights. He worked for Andris Dambis, the team. who developed the OSCar SUVs, and worked on three Dakar and several other endurance races in Africa. For the past four years, Kristaps has worked in the factory teams of the WRX (World Rally Cross Championship): in 2017 he oversaw the Rhine car Nitiss, in 2018 became Andreas Bakerud’s second mechanic and, as of 2019, was Chief Mattias Ekströmo EKS RX team mechanic. I mean, he basically worked on a factory team. It’s really great cold – In Latvia, an engineer of this level can be counted on the fingers of one hand. It was approached by people who bought the most exotic cars of every day, when the team began to show fashions, ”he introduced to his colleague Viesturas Kundzins, former head of communication at EKS RX.
After learning about the difficult situation of Vaidotas Injury, his friend Artūras Priednieks from Race Transport Solutions suggested a solution to the Latvian portal Go4speed, which presents all the most important motorsport news. 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, receiving an offer to go to the Dakar Rally is really, to put it mildly,” Umi himself admitted to Go4speed.
He also said that after the first three Dakar events on the African continent, he had managed to taste probably all possible flavors of desert racing, from grueling fatigue, lack of sleep, to sleeping in tents under pressure. less, to euphoria after solving complex 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.
By the way, from 2004, when the first OSCar debuted, to 2012, a total of 14 combat SUVs were built in Dakar, which have earned a reputation for extremely reliable equipment. The third generation OSCar cars managed to reach the finish line of all the endurance races in which they started. Benediktas Vanagas and Saulium Jurgelėnas began their modeling career with this model. The 25th place achieved by Aurelijus Petraitis and Antanas Juknevičius with OSCar in 2009 was for a long time the best result achieved by athletes from the Baltic countries.
About # iGo2Dakar: 2017 The project has started, the mission of which is to cover as widely as possible the most popular motorsport event in Lithuania, the Dakar Rally, and touch on all the interesting topics for fans. Filming, photographing and writing not only what the runners want to say, but also behind the scenes and technical subtleties of the sport, to show the wonderful scenery of Saudi Arabia and the sincere people of this country.
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