Svoboda Tatra Team Successfully Finishing Season in Polish Żagań

At the end of the last week, the Svoboda Tatra Team from Broumov set off on a journey to Żagań lying in the southeast of Poland to take part in the last round of the season. The crew, Václav Svoboda, Milan Drázda and Zdeněk Novák in their Tatra 815 4x4 "Dakar" took part in a rally called Baja Żagań, a Polish master race held within the "Rajdowe Mistrzostwa Polski Samochodów Terenowych (www.terenowo.pl)" competition, which is also included in the International Championship of the Czech Republic in the Cross-Country Rally 2014. The race was held from 24th to 26th October 2014. Winning cups they are bringing back from Poland, Svoboda's team went through all scheduled legs and stages without having problems or technical failures, so had entered the final round of the season with success.

While on Friday, 24th October 2014, there were administrative checks and scrutineering in Żagań, Saturday 25th October saw the true race. First, organisers took crews to Szprotawa-Wiechlice air base airport to go a three-lap race on a 17-km-long, rather fast, mostly sandy, circuit track. This leg had been designed mainly for spectators, who came to the airport to watch the events on the track in a pretty good number. The Saturday's competition was finished by a 65-km-long final leg, which would take the drivers and crews back to Żagań. The race went on on Sunday, 26th October 2014, in the area of a military base situated in the vast forests close to Żagań. There was a circuit about 70km in length reserved for drivers, with both very fast and technical legs, with many sandy sections. Enjoying also cold but beautiful autumn weather, drivers went on this circuit three times."

"I'm happy we finished this racing season here in Polish Żagań with honour. We, as a team, successfully started the year in Poland, and here, in Poland, we're going to finish it well, too ... This year has taught us some pretty big lessons; we've taken part in traditional races in Europe, particularly in Poland and Germany, as well as in African OiLibya Rally of Morocco, first in our career, where we felt comfortably, however, the engine, we'd been planning to change next season, would dash our hopes ... Therefore, next year will be definitely very busy as we have to fit our Tatra 815 ´Dakar´ with a new engine ..., yet the vehicle lived up to our expectations in Africa in all respects. We'd like to enter the European FIA series in the cross-country rally in the forthcoming season, but also endurance cross-country rallies in Africa, where we're thinking of, e.g., Tuareg Rally held in Morocco early in March next year. Therefore this year's last races in Żagań on the sandy track were a sort of a complete and good training for endurance desert races in Morocco, which besides the Dakar, are the world's most gruelling," said the boss of the Svoboda Tatra Team, Václav Svoboda, after the master races in Żagań, Poland, had finished.