New Updates from The MyHeritage Team at Dakar 2021

By Esther

January 8, 2021

We’re checking in on our favorite Dakar Rally 2021 team — the MyHeritage Team! MyHeritage is sponsoring a racing team in the 2021 Dakar Rally, the elite off-road endurance competition currently taking place in Saudi Arabia.

The competition is fierce, and the terrain makes for a difficult race. Problems arise as they advance, but the team has become adept at thinking on their feet, and adapting to the tough conditions.

Here are Co-driver Charly Gotlib’s updates from yesterday:

It was nearly two o’clock in the morning when the MyHeritage team rolled its SSV into the bivouac, after a 456 km long stage followed by an extra 260km liaison!

All went quite well for us along the desert trail and through the dunes.

The tracks were running over heavy sand that was very rough due to light rain from earlier. At one point we felt a heavy hit under the car, and we kept going.

Several kilometers later we sensed a flat tire.

After stepping out of the car, I discovered the source of the big hit: we had lost our underbody protection. That meant that we lost part of the floor of our car, leaving an open space under our feet!

The last 80 km of the stage were over dunes and we drove them through the night with the help of 2 truck teams driving with us and sharing their much brighter lights so we could see better the difficulties of the terrain during the crossing of the dunes.