Toyota Scores A Whitewash

There was a time when Lady Luck used to give Toyota a real hard time in the Toyota 1000 Desert Race, SA’s premier cross-country race, sponsored by Toyota. The team would lead, only to fall foul of some small issue, with another manufacturer storming through to take a famous victory. How times have changed. In this year’s Desert Race, Toyota recorded an emphatic clean sweep of the podium in the production class.

Three days and a total of 1 000km of Harry Flatters driving through the African bush.

This is the Toyota 1000 Desert Race, held in the Jwaneng area in Botswana. It’s the headline act of the South African Cross Country Racing series, and also serves as the third round of the 2018 Road to Dakar challenge.

The race started with a 40km prologue test on the Friday morning, to determine the starting positions for the first 400km race day, on the Saturday. It turned out to be one for the books, as two top crews set exactly the same time.

Toyota Gazoo Racing SA’s reigning champions Giniel de Villiers and Dennis Murphy clocked a time of 28:40; a time perfectly matched by Dakar quad legend Brian Baragwanath and Leonard Cremer (Century Racing CR5 Class FIA buggy).