Happy New Year and welcome to the start of Dakar Rally 2017! We’ll be here updating you daily on race progress as Team Sugawara blazes the trail from Paraguay to Argentina for this year’s 38th Dakar edition, the worlds toughest race…
Hino Team Sugawara arrived in the Paraguay capital of Asunción on Dec. 29 after a 1255km drive from Buenos Aires where they had been coordinating at the Hino Argentina dealership since mid-December. This will be the starting point for Dakar 2017 and where the vehicle inspections and documentation reviews were carried out on December 30. The team's two HINO500 Series trucks passed the checks without a hitch and the team was geared up and in good physical condition to begin the race on January 2.
Hino Team 2017 consisting of drivers, Yoshimasa Sugawara and Teruhito Sugawara; navigators Mitsugu Takahashi and Hiroyuki Sugiura; and mechanics Seiichi Suzuki, Masaki Nakamura, Hiroyuki Azuma, Koji Nakamura, Junya Inoue, and Kenji Kunimoto arrived in Buenos Aires on December 13 to acclimatize to the climate and time and altitude differences. Some team members expressed a few concerns regarding weather conditions and terrain but all were fully confident and looking forward to delivering a solid performance in this year’s rally.
This is an especially remarkable year for team director and driver of Car 1, Yoshimasa Sugawara who started in the Paris-Dakar Rally for the first time in 1983 at age 41. His records for Most Consecutive Finishes in the Dakar Rally at 20 Finishes and Most Consecutive Entries in the Dakar Rally at 33 Entries were recognized in the Guinness World Records 2016 and he is considered a legend in the Dakar Rally arena.