The Hino 500-Series truck, with part-time four-wheel drive, entered in the recent Mongolia Rally by Hino Team Sugawara put up another amazing performance by finishing seventh overall in this cross-country race out of an original field of 76 motorcycles and four-wheel vehicles.
This was the 20th running of the Mongolia Rally and it attracted an entry of 53 motorcycles and 23 four-wheel vehicles, with 42 finishers still running at the end of the week-long event, made up of 29 motorcycles and 13 four-wheelers.
The Mongolia Rally took competitors over a route of 3 800km which included sections through the Gobi Desert. The timed special stages totalled 3 218km, with the longest section covered in one day being 569km.
The only vehicles to finish ahead of the Hino, crewed by Teruhito Sugawara and Hiroyuki Sugiura, were two Toyota FJ Cruisers, an Oscar Buggy, a Toyota Tacoma pick-up and two KTM 450 motorcycles.
The participation of Team Hino Sugawara in the Mongolia Rally was used as part of the team’s intensive preparation programme for the 2015 Dakar Rally. This was the fifth year that Hino has used this event in Mongolia to test new developments for its racing trucks and on each occasion it has been a top-10 finisher, with a highest placing of fifth overall in 2010 and 2013.
This year the team’s focus was on testing suspension developments in Mongolia. A new system has been developed to improve traction over loose and uneven surfaces and the team was delighted with the results.
“The rally was very tough, with a 450km special stage on the first day,” explained driver Teruhito Sugawara. “The suspension was simply out-of-this-world amazing! Concerns about the reliability and durability of the new suspensions turned out to be a non-issue.
” We will be running a larger, 9-litre engine developing 600 horsepower, in the 2015 Dakar Rally and besides aiming to continue our run of victories in the class for trucks with engines under 10-litres capacity we are confident we can aim for a high placing overall next year too.”
Hino Team Sugawara has also released the names of four technicians from Hino dealerships in Japan who will be joining the two-truck team for the 2015 Dakar Rally in South America. This is an ongoing programme to involve the dealers and to increase the skill levels of their technicians as they compete for the honour of being part of this team which is renowned for its excellent reliability record in this famous, annual cross-country event.
