Prologue run is cancelled mid-way due to an accident in the Cars category.

January 2, Dakar Rally 2016 kicked off in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The two HINO500 Series trucks entered by HINO TEAM SUGAWARA made it off to a good start on the opening day of 14 days intense competition.

This day, a starting ceremony was held at the Technopolis exhibition hall in the outskirts of Buenos Aires―the same venue where vehicle inspections were carried out―during which each of the entering vehicles were introduced and started off from a ramped podium. The roster of entrants this year consisted of 136 bikes, 45 quads, 111 cars, and 55 trucks for a total of 347 vehicles. This represented a roughly 20 percent decrease from the previous 406. This decrease is believed to be partly due to Chile and Peru bowing out from hosting the rally over concerns regarding disaster response. And while the Trucks category saw 8 fewer entrants than last year's 63, the challenges faced by HINO TEAM SUGAWARA were expected to be no different from previous years as the list of tough, top tier regulars remained the same.

With the intense South American summer sun shining down, the weather this day was clear but muggy. As the podium would not be able to bear the trucks' weight, they started off from beside the podium as is usual practice. In response to the crowd's applause as they were introduced by the organizer, the Hino trucks blew their horns before starting off in good form.

This year, a short timed segment coined the "prologue run" was set 171km north of the starting point. The finish rankings in this segment were to be used to determine the starting order for the next day (SS for January 3), but an accident occurred in the Cars category, where a car veered off course, injuring a group of spectators. Due to this accident, this timed section was canceled and the trucks ran the entire section as a liaison segment heading out to Rosario.

Tomorrow, January 3, will be a restart for the team as the Cars and Trucks categories face a 258km SS between Rosario and Villa Carlos Paz. The two HINO500 Series trucks were serviced by team mechanics at their bivouac in Rosario and were ready to take on the race in good shape.

Yoshimasa Sugawara: The truck is doing exceptionally well, which goes without saying as there was no competition today. I will be refocusing on tomorrow's SS.

Mitsugu Takahashi: This is the first Dakar Rally for me, but I've navigated for Yoshimasa Sugawara on many occasions in the Rally Mongolia, so I was able to finish the day without getting overly nervous. To be honest, there was a part of me that was relieved to hear that the competition run was cancelled.

Teruhito Sugawara: I was a bit disappointed at the prologue run being cancelled. That said, even though the first part of the SS tomorrow (January 3) will feature agricultural roads similar to what we had today, I don't see us being at a disadvantage later in the segment as we will be going through twisty intermountain roads. This will be a restart for us and I will be giving it my best.

Hiroyuki Sugiura: We were looking forward to the prologue run, if only to compare our potential against our competitors', but there's nothing we can do about that now. The course for tomorrow will be one that we've driven on in the past, and since the roads are a bit narrow for trucks, we may be able to leverage the strengths of the HINO500 Series, which are relatively more compact.