The fourth episode of Polaris’ Tough Doesn’t Quit: Defending Dakar series was released on Friday, focusing on the mutual trust between the driver and his navigator.

For his Dakar debut, Brock Heger has his Polaris Factory Racing teammate Max Eddy Jr. as navigator. While Eddy competes in SCORE alongside Heger as a fellow driver, he has co-driving experience in both desert racing and Dakar, having done the latter for Cole Potts in 2019. Eddy even worked as Heger’s co-driver for King of the Hammers’ UTV Hammers Championship last year, where they won their class.

Eddy compared his responsibilities, which consists of reading the roadbook to Heger, to letting “your wife drive and (you) sit there and try to read a book without lifting your head up when you’re in traffic.”

Through five stages, their trust in each other has worked splendidly as they currently lead the SSV overall with a win in the Chrono Stage.

Opposite them at Sébastien Loeb Racing are defending winners Xavier de Soultrait and Martin Bonnet. Both are former bike racers before making the switch to driving and navigating, and sit second in the class overall with a Stage #1 win.

“The role of a navigator during Dakar is to find all the waypoint, but it’s not just that,” commented Bonnet. “It’s to find good speed. Sometimes I say to Xavier, ‘We are too slow or we are too fast,’ and we have to find the good speed with the dunes and with strategy. With Xavier, we have the same personality. We are focused to win, we are focused to do the best during the race.”

Tough Doesn’t Quit: Defending Dakar releases each Friday. The first episode focused on preparing for the 2025 Dakar Rally, the second followed the Polaris RZR Pro R Factory, and the third was primarily about Heger and Soultrait.

Defending Dakar Episode 4 on YouTube

Featured image credit: Florent Gooden / DPPI