Dream Team Introduced In Derecske

The first time it is a bit difficult to find the service point set up at the end of Dózsa György Street, on the premises of a local firm. At nine o’clock in the morning everything is silent here since the contestants had already departed, and there are at least two hours left until the service between the morning and afternoon selective stages (or as they are called by everyone, the speed stages), when the real rush will begin for the mechanics. But now they are sitting in the shade of the service trucks. And though the results are continuously updated in the office set up for the tournament, each team has one or two notebooks on standby to monitor the race – which is approximately ten kilometers from here – on the internet.

– Did you see that? Zoli was only six seconds behind Laci in the speed stage! This is a really good result! – Staff Sergeant György Borisz, one of the mechanics of Dream Team Cheetahs (Gepárdok), the off-road rally team of the Hungarian Defence Forces welcomes me. Just to make sure that everybody understands: Zoli, that is Sergeant First Class Zoltán Bálint, is the driver of the Dream Team, and Laci stands for László Palik, the race driver of the year in 2008, and the leader of Palik Racing Team that prepared the Cheetahs. And this ‘only six seconds’ between the amateur and the professional is a much better result than anybody would have expected…

But then, unfortunately, bad news arrive via the world wide web: something is not right with the car, the ’military green’, 3,500 cc Nissan Navara Pickup. There is something which causes slow round results in the second speed stage. It will turn out soon what the deficiency is, since the guys will come back to the service point anyway after the selective stage. But the atmosphere becomes a bit tense.

While the boys are unloading the necessary service equipments from the truck – fuel containers, spare tires, wrenches and tools are brought out from the ‘belly’ of the huge iron monster – I pay a visit to the race office. Attila Csapó, the chief organizer of the Derecske off-road rally just smiles at my ignorance, and like a good teacher, he explains it to me: this year’s national championship consists of five heats, but off-road racers from other countries can also enter. For example, the Miroslav Zapletal-Zdenek Ulehla team from the Czech Republic have also entered this race; they achieved an outstanding result in Dakar Rally this January in Argentina. I also learn that a total of 16 professional cars set forth in the three-day weekend competition, the nine speed stages. And of course, motorbikes and quads have also entered the race.

Attila Csapó was glad to see the military team’s entry, since as he says, some ’fresh blood’ is always useful in the life of a branch of sport. He also tells me that he supports the Bálint-Honfi duo very much since he also participated in their training, which lasted almost four months, and taught the guys navigational skills.

– Friday afternoon we could see that they were touched, and they were aware that this is trial by fire for them. But this morning they set forth the first Saturday selective stage like real professionals – says Attila, who also tells me that the speed stages of the race are held in three locations: in the area around Nagyrábé, between Derecske and Berettyóújfalu, and between Derecske and Hajdúbabos. The route sections are very dusty and ‘terribly fast’, even the slowest team could reach the top speed of 165 km/h.

In the meantime, after the completion of the second selective stage, the cars arrive at the service park one after the other. The typical sound of the Nissan Navara with entry number 1, driven by László Palik and his navigator Gábor Darázsi, can be recognized even from a great distance, so the mechanics of Palik Racing Team are getting ‘combat ready’ immediately. They have a mere hour to examine the vehicle in every detail since the two selective stages will start in the afternoon. Fortunately, the racers do not report any serious default therefore the mechanics only have to conduct the ‘routine check’.

A few minutes later, the pickup of the Dream Team, with entry number 23 – in the colours of Honvéd Sports Association of Budapest – also arrives. Zoli Bálint gets out the cockpit a bit nervously and there are some deep wrinkles on face of Barna Honfi as well. We are told: in the beginning of the second speed stage, which is eighty kilometers long, only a few thousand meters after the starting line, one of their stub axles broke and they had to complete the distance with this failure. Because of that, the car was unstable and they had to take back from their speed in the turns, acceleration was also slow, and they had to calculate with a considerably longer braking distance than necessary.

– In short, this stage was very busy. But it was a terribly good feeling to sit behind the wheel. This is what I wanted to do all my life – tells Zoltán.

Barna adds: the technical error of the car confused them a bit, but in his opinion they have managed to solve the situation. What can you do – he says -, this is off-road rally! Such failures are a part of the deal!

Zoli Bálint and László Palik step aside for a while. The Hungarian off-road champion of 2008 explains something to the ’young titan’, it can be seen even from a long distance. Any good advice? – I ask Laci a minute later, who is only smiling: it is not nice to ask anything like that from a racer.

Of course, the members of the Dream Team service team – Sergeant First Class László Szenáki, Staff Sergeant György Borisz, Corporal Gábor Halmai, and Corporal Ákos Gazdag – do not notice anything, for they are working on the maintenance of the car with ’full speed’. The standard time for replacing a stub axle is eight minutes, which is followed by tire change, refuelling, checking the oil levels, and cleaning the windshields.

In the meantime, an old acquaintance arrives to the service point: Major General (Eng.) Dr. János Isaszegi, the commander of HDF Central Training Base (MH KKB) in Szentendre. The sight of a two-star general wearing camouflage uniform may be a bit unusual around here, because in just a few minutes, he is already more popular among the visitors of the service park than the wonder-vehicles of the race. The presence of General Isaszegi is not a coincidence since the members of Dream Team are practically his ’sons’ because the six soldiers belong to the personnel of MH KKB until the off-road rally training period and the major general thought he would be present in the introductory race of the guys by all means.

General Isaszegi is accompanied by former three-time Hungarian off-road champion Miklós Benyó to the morning speed stages, for the sports director of Dream Team, Mr Benyó also participated in the preparation of the team. First he visits the driver and the navigator and asks them what the stage was like and how the car performed. Of course, some good advice cannot be left unsaid – he is going on for minutes about how he saw it from the outside, from one of the inspection points, what it is that should be done differently in order to be faster.

Miki helps us, too, and agrees to accompany us so that we can see the departure of the afternoon speed stages from the best possible location. By the time we get there, there are hundreds in the fields around the village of Nagyrábé, waiting for the field to start.

– Look, there’s Laci Palik! In that robust car. That other one is Ádám Szalay, you know, the Dakar-guy – says one of the locals, whom I ask: why is this off-road rally such a big event? You know – he replies – there is nothing on earth happening here, but now at least we will have something to talk about for a while with the friends in the pub in the evening…

The cars leave at two-minute intervals. The roaring of the several hundred horsepower vehicles is almost intolerable, and the mischievous wind keeps drifting the dust stirred by the tires towards the audience, and it sticks to our hair, crackles between our teeth. But nobody minds it now, because there hasn’t been such a spectacular event in the village for more than a decade.

We are watching the second timed stage in the afternoon from a spot where we can see hundreds of meters of the stretch of the road . In the distance, a huge cloud of dust signals when a car arrives. The speed is extremely high, the drivers, as they say, push it as fast as they can. And then the walkie-talkie crackles in the hand of one of the judges: it is reported that one of the cars is ’on its roof’ on the other side of the course. In an instance, we can see in the face of Miklós Benyó that he is worried and this expression lasts until we find out that car number 9 drifted off in one of the bends. Although a bit broken, but it is already back in the race and fortunately, the contestants are unharmed. So the troops can complete this stage without any issues.

When we return to the service point, we are told that Dream Team ended up sixth in the first selective stage in the afternoon, and eighth in the second stage. After these two days of racing, this is enough for the eighth place of the combined race. The troops are exactly 19 minutes 41 seconds behind the leading Balázs Szalay-László Bunkoczi team. And Palik-Darázsi team can start the last three selective stages on Sunday from the fourth place – 4 minutes 47 seconds behind the leaders.

The pilots and the navigators have finished their ‘work’ for today, but for the mechanics the ‘afternoon shift’ is just beginning, for the cars have to be checked again in order that the contestants can squeeze out an even greater performance and better results on the final day on Sunday. We hope that in their first off-road rally ever, Dream Team Cheetahs can achieve an even better result than the one on Saturday.