Dakar Rally ’19 calls f0r Marsh

RACE-WITHIN-A-RACE: MARSH-GREYLING DUO ONE OF FIVE TO ENTER THE ROAD TO DAKAR RACE

For 2018, Road to Dakar consists of six events, hosted at six international races.

The Red-Lined Motorsport team of Terence Marsh and Riaan Greyling (BF Goodrich Nissan Navara) emerged from this year’s Toyota Kalahari Botswana 1000 Desert Race two weekends ago as winners of the 2018 Road to Dakar contest.

This means that Marsh receives a free entry to the 2019 Dakar Rally, valued at €28 000 (about R448 000) which was again sponsored in Botswana by Toyota SA Motors.

The Marsh-Greyling duo was one of five crews to enter the Road to Dakar at this year’s Desert Race, and the pair drove an immaculate race to claim the sought-after prize.

This race-within-a-race saw a lot of drama, before the dust finally settled over the southern Botswana town of Jwaneng, which has played host to the Toyota Kalahari Botswana 1000 Desert Race for the last five years.

The initial lead in the Road to Dakar category went to the RedLined Motorsport Nissan Navara crew of Shameer Variawa and Zaheer Bodhanya.

This highly experienced pairing took their brand new Nissan Navara out on its maiden race, and quickly set a blistering pace.

Variawa is a former South African national champion and has won the Desert Race three times on the trot, so plenty of expectation from the crew, despite tackling their first local race in a fourwheel-drive vehicle.

But disaster struck when their four-day-old Nissan Navara caught alight, just 6km from the end of the first racing loop on Saturday.

The crew managed to stop the car and escape from the burning cockpit, only to watch their new car go up in flames – together with their hopes and dreams of winning the Road to Dakar for 2018.

This meant that team-mates Marsh-Greyling took over the lead in the Road to Dakar, the third such event for this year.

They held on to this lead, despite taking on the Desert Race on production tyres – the BF Goodrich KM3 rubber they were testing during Africa’s longest and toughest automotive race.

For 2018, the Road to Dakar consists of six events, hosted at six international races.

The first Road to Dakar for the year took place during the Sanora Rally, but only motorcycles were eligible during the event.

The Marzouga Rally in Morocco was next, where both cars and bikes were eligible.

Then came the Desert Race in Botswana, with only cars eligible to enter.

Next up is the Baja Aragon in Spain, where only cars are eligible for entry; with the Indian Baja and Desafio Inca in Peru completing the line-up for 2018.