It’s that time of year again with the Dakar Rally taking place in South America. many of the major truck makers get involved racing their trucks as support vehicles to the car and motorbike racing teams. The 14 day event takes the trucks through the wilds of South America, starting from Rosario in Argentina, heading north into Bolivia before heading back south through Chile, ending in Valparaiso.
This year’s event has separate special stages for the competitors as well as the main route where all of the competitors travel the same roads across the dry wastes of South America. The ruggedness of the route leads to some spectacular spills and this has led to some interesting encounters, including this crashed car being completely ignored and potentially damaged by one truck before being rescued by De Rooy’s Iveco Powerstar.
Another serious crash sees a truck upside down in a gully with little prospect of recovery.
Later we see, in this clip, the recovery was made by a fellow competitor, De Rooy again, and the team were compensated in terms of time lost for being a good samaritan.