THE DUST
Karel Loprais Lost the 1986 Dakar Pulling Rivals Out of the Mud
A Tatra test driver gave up a podium in Senegal to dig out other trucks, then came back two years later and won the Dakar.
Updated October 22, 2026
Karel Loprais went to work at the Tatra truck factory in Kopřivnice in 1967. He started on the floor and became a test driver. In 1986 Tatra sent him to the Dakar with Radomír Stachura and Jaroslav Krpec in a six-wheel-drive Tatra 815.
Rivals took the Tatras for support trucks. Then Loprais ran second in the truck class.
Senegal, January 1986. Just before Saint-Louis the ground gives way. Trucks sink in deep mud and block the only way through.
Loprais and his crew stop and help. They spend hours pulling rivals out. When they finally reach the start of the last stage, they are too late. They are disqualified and drive into Dakar unclassified.
He comes back in 1987 in a new two-axle Tatra 815 4x4 and finishes second.
In 1988 that same truck, rebuilt, wears No. 607. Loprais drives, with Stachura and Tomáš Mück aboard. This time nobody beats them. A second Czechoslovak truck, Jiří Moskal's LIAZ, finishes right behind.
It is the first of six Dakar truck wins for Loprais. Later the press called him Monsieur Dakar. The 1988 truck now sits in Tatra's truck museum in Kopřivnice, the town where he built his career.
What is the longest you ever spent digging someone else out, and what did it cost you?
True races. Still kicking.