South African TreasuryOne Racing privateers Hennie de Klerk and Johann Smalberger once again made best of treacherous Day 4 conditions at Dakar 2020 Saudi Arabia in spite of as they dodged rocks, punctures and seemingly impenetrable dust to vault from 41st to 36th in the overall car standings on another precarious  453km run from Neom to Al-Ula in Saudi Arabia.

“If we came here looking for adventure, oh boy, we got it!” Hennie de Klerk admitted. “Today had it all, from driving blind in the thick dust to hitting massive rocks and wrecking our tyres that we had to stop we can't remember how many times to swap or plug tyres — it was an epic challenge! “Fortunately we are not alone in what we face and by all measures, we came off quite lightly at the end of the day because everyone is in the same boat!

“Most importantly, we somehow minimised our damage today and were able to climb from 41st to 36th overall in spite of the challenges — it seems that many of our rivals fared far worse. “So hopefully our pace and approach is pretty good — many of the guys we passed were waiting for tyres after using all their spares, so let's hope we can keep up the progress. 

“For the rest, our TreasuryOne Red-Lined Nissan Navara VK56 performed faultlessly again today and Johann kept us on a tight rein — both of which make it possible to escape all those ambushes lying in wait on this route! “Tomorrow they say we will have an easier run on the sandy hills from Al’Ula to Ha’il, which is what they said about today, but it turned out very different and really rocky and tough — all we can add, is bring it on!”