The past year has been something of a rollercoaster for Toyota Gazoo Racing’s Henk Lategan. A fourth South African Rally Raid Championship has helped in the preparations for another crack at the Dakar Rally, but the intervening period has also produced some of the toughest moments of his career to date.
On the eve of the 2024 Dakar in Saudi Arabia, Lategan was already on the sidelines, a victim of a dislocated shoulder sustained in a SARRC event. The resulting surgery and extensive rehabilitation meant he was forced out of the Dakar, with the road to recovery agonizingly slow.
To understand the latest injury struggle, you need to go back to Lategan’s maiden assault on the event, back in 2021. A heavy accident before the rest day broke his shoulder and collarbone, a baptism of fire on the world’s most demanding rally raid.
“At that time, I didn’t know what was going to happen or how long I was going to be out for,” Lategan tells DirtFish. “And that injury was a little bit less severe compared to what happened more recently. I just had to go through it day by day and I managed to get back in the car 100 days after my surgery, so that worked out quite well even though it was a bit early to be getting back in the car.
Lategan's debut Dakar ended with hefty shunt
“This time around, however, it was a bit more serious surgery. I knew exactly what was wrong even before I got out of the car, and I knew what was going to happen for the next while and that I wasn’t going to go to Dakar, which was a terrible realization.
“The surgeon, who has specialized in shoulder injuries for the last 20 years, told me that it wasn’t a common injury: it dislocates backwards and down, so that’s why they didn’t pick it up straight away the first time because it goes and sits behind your shoulder blade, and they cannot feel that it’s dislocated.
“So, I asked the surgeon how many times he had seen this specific injury in his 20 years, and he told me: ‘three’. So it’s such a freak injury and for it to happen twice is incredible.”
Having been through the process 18 months prior, Lategan knew what to expect in terms of the road to recovery. What he wasn’t prepared for, though, was the amount of time he needed to heal properly before getting back into competition.
“Second time around it was around five months before I was fit enough to get back into the car, and my first race was a local race in South Africa.
Determined South African has twice had to fight back from injury
“There’s always that element of doubt when you haven’t been in the car for nearly half a year – at one point I couldn’t even drive myself on the road – and I questioned whether I had lost it or not.
“But I got in the car, did the shakedown, and after the first loop we were nearly three minutes ahead, so I realized that I could still drive but it wasn’t 100% by this point. I wasn’t able to change the tires if we had a flat, for example, and I was getting a little tired after loops, to the point where I couldn’t tighten my own seatbelts because I was so weak.”
Slowly but surely, the strength came back and Lategan – alongside his long-term navigator, former biker Brett Cummings – returned to full-time competition in the South African championship.
The pair dominated the season, taking four victories from six events en route to a fourth title. It was the sort of morale-boosting triumph a driver needs after months of inaction and self-doubt.
“The shoulder is giving me no trouble now which is great,” says Lategan. “It’s got better and better through the year, and we’ve been going flat-out and doing all the things I used to do. The last two, three months, I have been working really hard with my physio and chiropractor, all of them working together to make it as strong as possible.”
Domination in his homeland secured fourth national title
Toyota Gazoo Racing heads into the 47th running of the Dakar with renewed hope that it can challenge for victory in the Ultimate category once more. It won’t be easy, with a Hilux DKR T1+ that is nearing the end of its development curve and up against the new vehicles from Dacia and M-Sport Ford.
Alongside Guy Botterill, Saood Variawa (both of whom made their Dakar debuts in 2024) and veteran Giniel de Villiers, Lategan is part of a TGR South Africa outfit keen to make amends for a challenging past couple of editions. The European-based W2RC crews of Seth Quintero and Lucas Moraes make it six factory Hiluxes on the start podium.
A new management structure within the wider TGR operation (with Glyn Hall having sold up to Shameer Variawa last year) has resulted in a major reshuffle, but there have been successes that point towards Toyota still being in the mix come January.
It won the W2RC Manufacturers’ title due in part to a two-car full-season effort with Quintero and Monraes to Nasser Racing’s solo entry, while Moraes took a third Rally dos Sertoes win in September.
Toyota won W2RC manufacturers' title thanks to the likes of Seth Quintero
And with Lategan showing the way in the South African championship, confidence is starting to build again.
“The competition in the South African championship is really tough, there’s a lot of fast guys and I think we have a great championship over here,” Lategan says. “The format we have here with the navigation is a little bit different because instead of waypoints, we use a GPS track and because of that, the pace is a lot higher.
“From that point of view, it’s really good because you are pushing all the time, even more than Dakar. But that’s because you always have confirmation that you’re on the right route in South Africa and you believe what it says in the road book.
“In the W2RC, you can be 20 meters to the left of the waypoint, and then whatever it says is in the road book is not there, so that’s why the pace is lower on the Dakar. From a navigation point, the South African championship is maybe not the best preparation for Dakar.”
Despite this, given the travails of injury Lategan has had to endure twice already in his career, just making it to the Bisha Start Camp in the new year is a victory of sorts.
Lategan is ready for his latest assault on the world's most challenging rally raid
“Every year we go to the Dakar, we learn new things, and we’ve sort of been doing things on purpose, trying to do things with a set plan,” adds Lategan.
“The first year we went, we were clueless – we had no idea about the terrain, the stages or what the pace of the others was going to be like. So it was a steep learning curve, and I only made it to stage five [before the crash].
“Since then, we’ve won two stages and used the time well to judge the pace and confirm that we weren’t completely off it.
“Dakar is not a one- or two-day race, it’s a two-week event so the plan this year is trying to put a full race together. But the race is so demanding mentally; after the rest day you’ve done a week and you’re only halfway home. It’s something else and not making mistakes is extremely difficult. In 2023 we were second and suffered a broken damper, but we’ve been choosing what to learn and how to learn it.”
With new terrain and stages also comes new competition. The playing field has evolved since Lategan’s last foray on the Dakar Rally, but don’t be surprised to see the South African mixing it at the front now he’s injury free.
