With third- and sixth-fastest times, the Kuipers-Jongbloed Hybrid crews have earned excellent starting positions for tomorrow. A stage featuring 305 competitive kilometres awaits, and the serious racing begins.
In a prologue, you can often lose more than you can win. Besides, it’s all about the starting positions, and time gaps don’t really matter. The team is therefore extremely pleased with the result. Gert Huzink, Hugo Kupper and Mario Kress were third, just six seconds behind winner Mitchel van den Brink. Despite that tiny gap, Latvia’s Vaidotas Žala from Team De Rooy managed to slot in between the two Dutch crews. Gert said: “It was a fast test with lots of flat-out sections, but also some big rocks in between where you could easily make a mistake. In the middle of the stage, in a mountain pass, we caught up to the Hino, but it moved aside fairly quickly once we were out of there. Then it was flat-out to the finish again and, without taking risks, we secured a great third place—meaning we get to fight at the front among the trucks tomorrow.”
For debutant Kay Huzink, simply reaching the finish is the main goal. That he and Rob Buursen and Gait Schoneveld managed to set the sixth-fastest time today is a major bonus. Kay said: “Today we started with a short 22-kilometre prologue. The test was very fast, but it did have a few tricky passages. We found a good pace, didn’t overdo it, and in the end we were able to finish seventh. Due to a time penalty for Macík, we moved up one place and can start Stage 1 tomorrow as the sixth truck.”
Just like today, the city of Yanbu will be both the start and finish location tomorrow. In addition to the 305 competitive kilometres, the crews will also have to cover 213 kilometres of liaison. Kuipers-Jongbloed Hybrid is looking forward to it with confidence.
Source: HET Team
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