"We will be aiming to win our 8th straight championship in our class with a 1-2 finish, and to join the group of leading finishers in the overall trucks category."Team holds event announcing entry in Dakar Rally 2017.
Nov 10, 2016
On October 21, 2016, HINO TEAM SUGAWARA held a Dakar Rally 2017 entry announcement event at Hino Motors headquarters, where the team members expressed their determination for the rally. The team's two completed HINO500 Series trucks were also put on display.
At the opening of the event, Hino Motors President Yasuhiko Ichihashi spoke on the importance of the company's ongoing participation in the Dakar Rally. This was followed by a description from Teruhito Sugawara, driver of the team's Car 2, of some of the features of the 2017 rally's course and the upgrades the team has made to its racing trucks. Up next was Hiroyuki Azuma from Fukushima Hino, who expressed his passion for the rally on behalf of the team's mechanics. Last on the podium, team director and driver of Car 1-the Iron Man of Dakar with a record 33 straight entries in the rally-Yoshimasa Sugawara expressed his determination for the rally.
The team has also redesigned its racing suits for the upcoming rally, and showcased the new design, which is based on a red color scheme that expresses HINO TEAM SUGAWARA's spirit of taking on the rally's many challenges, and their burning passion for the rally.
Yasuhiko Ichihashi, president, Hino Motors
"The reason we continue to race in the world's most grueling rally is to hone our truck production and servicing capabilities."
Our mission is to make the world a better place to live by helping people and goods get where they need to go-safely, economically and with environmental responsibility-while focusing on sustainable development. In order to fulfill this mission, it is essential that the vehicles we produce provide excellent levels of quality, durability and reliability, and that we are able to offer services that reduce down times as much as possible. By taking part in the Dakar Rally, the world's most grueling rally, we have continued to hone our truck production and servicing capabilities.
We now live in a time where we can order almost anything on the internet and have it conveniently delivered to our home. We believe the role of trucks in logistics will continue to grow to address the many shifts that our communities are undergoing: people finding more and more of their time being taken up by child-rearing and caregiving, the demographic hollowing-out of non-urban communities, and the increasing numbers of seniors who are finding it difficult to step out of their homes. Meanwhile, the shortage of new talent in our industry-brought on by dwindling birth rates and an aging population, as well as the younger generation's waning interest in automobiles-is also emerging as a serious problem.
To address these issues, Hino has been putting significant effort into displaying the HINO500 Series Dakar Rally trucks at various events, and inviting Mr. Sugawara to speak about the rally. Thanks to your support, these events have proven very popular.
Truck transport is realized by the people who make trucks, those who drive them, and those who service them. It would not be possible if even one of these links in the chain were missing. Our hope at Hino is to get as many young people as possible interested in trucks, and to stir their desires to become makers and/or drivers of trucks.
Teruhito Sugawara, driver, Car 2
"We'll be aiming for higher rankings more aggressively than ever before."
The upcoming race will be the ninth Dakar Rally to be held in South America since the event was relocated from Africa in 2009, and the first to start off in Paraguay. Rally organizers have announced the race will kick off at Asunción, the country's capital city, and take us through Bolivia before entering Argentina and arriving at the finish line in Buenos Aires.
A characteristic of this rally is that we'll be racing through high-altitude terrain in Bolivia, where many of the areas are situated at elevations approaching 4,000 meters. Our camp sites will be set up under the harsh conditions of 3,000-plus-meter elevations, which is actually like camping at the summit of Mt. Fuji. In the second half of the race in Argentina, we'll be racing tough stages through areas with numerous desert dunes. Every year, the rally challenges us with harsh conditions that are true to its reputation as the most grueling race on the planet. We expect the upcoming rally to also be quite challenging, albeit for a shorter number of days this year, and we believe the second half may prove to be our main battlefield.
With respect to our trucks, the truck I'll be driving, Car 2, was built new, while Car 1 is the same truck we raced last year.
There are two important upgrades that we made to our trucks.
The first upgrade was on the trucks' engines, which we upgraded from 8 liters to 9 liters in 2014. From that point, we phased in a variety of enhancements, and repeatedly put them through real-world testing situations to further evolve them. For the upcoming race, we made changes to the engines' interiors, incorporating new racing parts, and my impression of the engines is that they've become very powerful.
The second upgrade was with the trucks' suspension systems. This is a crucial element that determines how fast we're able to go over bumpy terrain. To this end, we took part in the Silk Way Rally, which spanned a distance of 11,000 kilometers from Moscow to Beijing, to run our trucks through a variety of tests under real-world conditions. Specifically, we increased the number of leaf springs from the previous two to three to improve durability. Meanwhile, we also increased the number of leaf springs on our rear suspensions to two, which up until our previous race consisted of mono-leaf springs (only one leaf spring), again to ensure better durability. But durability wasn't the only thing on our minds, and these upgrades were also designed to retain the suspensions' original surface tracking performance.
In recent years, the leading teams have been breaking from tradition and increasing the number of trucks they enter to six or seven, and this poses a challenge for teams aiming to finish near the top. But even under these conditions, we believe our trucks are capable of achieving our goal of finishing in the leading group in the overall trucks category.
We've also fully redesigned our uniforms this year. In the previous rally, we were able to set a record of 25 straight finishes since Hino Motors' first entry in the event in 1991, so we redesigned our suits as a way to express our determination that we'll be turning a new page in our history. In the upcoming Dakar Rally, which will be our 26th, we're committed to racing more aggressively than ever before, and aim to finish in the leading group.
Hiroyuki Azuma, mechanic
"We'll be overcoming all challenges through teamwork, and will produce results through our best-in-the-world servicing capabilities."
All of the mechanics from dealerships, including myself, are very proud of having made the Dakar Rally team.
When I first hit the job market, I was amazed by the Hino trucks racing through deserts in the Dakar Rally. And when I learned that the team chose its mechanics from among Hino dealership mechanics, I felt that I would someday like to service those trucks myself, and that's when I decided to join Fukushima Hino. I worked very hard at this, and I'm very happy to have made the 2017 Dakar Rally team.
This July, we entered the Silk Way Rally to use it as a real-world testing ground. This was my first experience with racing, and there were things that caught me off guard, but we were all able to come together as a team to finish the rally, so it was great training for us.
Come January 2017, we'll not only be finishing the rally, but also putting in our best to improve our overall standings as much as we can. So I'll be giving my all to bring big smiles to the faces of my co-workers in Fukushima and my family.
In Fukushima, although we've been living daily with the anxiety of an uncertain future, we-our colleagues at work and our families-have been able to work together to overcome these challenges. In the Dakar Rally, I imagine we'll be faced with daily challenges that we can't even imagine at this point, but I'm certain we'll be able to overcome them by working together as a team.
I know our HINO500 Series trucks have been nicknamed the "Little Monsters." I would like to deliver such results through our best-in-the-world servicing capabilities that we, collectively, will all be known and respected by our rivals as the "Little Monsters."
I would like to thank all of you in advance for the support you send our way from Japan for HINO TEAM SUGAWARA.
Yoshimasa Sugawara, team director and driver of Car 1
"We'll be renewing our determination because people will be watching us, not only in Japan, but also from around the world."
Hino Motors first entered the Dakar Rally in 1991 in commemoration of the company's 50th anniversary, and I've been driving Hino trucks since 1992.
When we first raced in the trucks category, we managed to eke out a solid performance, and that's what has brought us to where we are. Had we failed back then, I don't think we would be here today.
That's why we had Car 2 race in the Silk Way Rally as a way to test the truck and train the team members who joined from dealerships. I believe this was a very good rehearsal, as they were able to experience the competition and make corrections to things that went wrong in order to prepare for the Dakar Rally.
We ran the trucks that we'll be entering through a test drive on October 16 at Hino Motors' Ibaraki test tracks. We paced them through slaloms on a flat surface, and while the rear wheels on the previous trucks wouldn't turn under those conditions, the rear wheels on the new trucks would spin if we were to step on the gas pedal even slightly. The trucks are producing a lot of power, so I'm certainly looking forward to seeing how we do.
I recently had the opportunity to speak before approximately 300 Hino dealership reps from around 90 countries around the world, and all of them had very high expectations for the HINO500 Series trucks' performance. So we'll be renewing our determination and putting in our best performance because people will be watching us, not only in Japan, but also from around the world. Argentina got its first Hino Motors dealership this year, and we'll now be able to service our trucks there. We-the crew, mechanics, and everyone involved in this undertaking-are committed to coming together to take on this challenge as a team, so this year again, I would like to thank you all in advance for your great support.
A send-off party for HINO TEAM SUGAWARA was held later in the same day, with participation from sponsor representatives and Hino Group employees. Hino Motors senior managing director and member of the board, Taketo Nakane, expressed his support, saying, "Some very important records-26th straight finish, eighth straight championship in our class, and 34 straight entries-hinge on our success in the upcoming Dakar Rally. We know the team will be able to leverage the results of its summer training camp and give the rally its best, leaving nothing to regret." At the closing of the event, in response to the call, "We're going for the top!" everyone present waved their fists in the air and the venue reverberated with the cheer of, "Eih, eih, oh!"
