Brian Joss – Hino, the leading Japanese truck manufacturer, registered a 27th successive finish in the gruelling Dakar Rally, which took place in Peru recently. Hino has had at least one of its trucks qualify as a finisher in every Dakar staged since it competed for the first time in 1991.
Sugawara’s father, Yoshimasa, failed to finish because of a mechanical problem. This was only the third time that a Hino has failed to finish a Dakar Rally. The first time was in 2010 when one of the Team Sugawara trucks was disqualified for missing a route checkpoint.
Only 14 trucks from the original field of 41 managed to qualify as official finishers this year. The number of finishers compared to the number of entrants (in brackets) were: Hino 1 (2); Kamaz 2 (4); Maz 2 (4), Iveco 4 (7); Liaz 0 (1); Renault 0 (3); Tatra 1 (3); MAN 3 (10); Ford 0 (1); Ginaf 0 (1); DAF 1 (4) and Mercedes-Benz 0 (1).
“We believe that the Hino spirit, which drives us to constantly adopt technological innovations in our trucks, races with us through the Dakar Rally,” said Yoshimasa who has entered more Dakar Rallies than anybody else in the world.