Elisabete Jacinto and the Bio-Ritmo® team are counting down to the beginning of the Morocco Desert Challenge, which will take place on the 16th of April. The off-road team composed by Elisabete Jacinto, José Marques and Marco Cochinho carefully prepared this competition and made some tests to ensure the reliability of the mechanical changes made to the MAN TGS.
With an original route extending from South to North, the Morocco Desert Challenge rally will involve seven stages and will be held from the Atlantic coast, starting in Agadir and ending in Saïdia. This guarantees a great diversity of landscapes. The size of each stage diverges between 208 and 405 km, thus fulfilling a total of 2200 timed kilometers with the peculiarity of not having to accomplish any kilometers of road between the special stages. The track presented for this event promises many sand passages with the Erg Chebbi and Chegaga dunes imposing the greatest difficulties.
With about 140 vehicles registered and 475 participants from 21 nationalities, this edition of the Morocco Desert Challenge will be quite disputed. The competition has 17 truck teams being the most important names the ones of Martin Van Den Brink, Igor Bouwens and Gert Huzink. Martin Van Den Brink, of the Mammoet Rally Sport team, won the Libya Rally in 2016 and also the 2015 edition of Rally Oilibya du Maroc. Igor Bouwens, of Belgian team Gregoor Racing, was second in the 2016 edition of this race and Gert Huzink won in 2016, among trucks, the Rally Oilibya Du Maroc and was also the Libya Rally winner in 2015.
Elisabete Jacinto knows that there are many difficulties in this race, but she believes that the team has the right skills to achieve the goals that were set: « We are ambitious and as always we will fight for a place on the podium », revealed the Portuguese driver.