Feature: the greatest off-road race on Earth
I’M
standing on a dune in the middle of the Peruvian Desert awaiting the moment I get to experience live Dakar action for the rst time. Getting here involved a bit of a Dakar challenge in the sense of travelling halfway around the globe, then ve hours by shuttle between the capital Lima and the town of Pisco to sleep a few hours before meeting our driver in a kitted-out Toyota Land Cruiser 200 V8 at 04h00 to bring us to this remote viewpoint. I may be jetlagged and red-eyed, but my excitement is off the charts.
And then it happens ... four dots appear on the horizon and the morning calm is shattered by the sound of race engines taking a beating. As the vehicles quickly approach, I spot they’re quad bikes kicking up the feshfesh. A moment later, I realise the fourth dot is not a quad but a helicopter skimming the sand while lming the action at close proximity. Dakar just got real in every sense.
What’s most surprising to a rookie Dakar spectator like me is the sheer scale of the
As guests of Toyota Gazoo Racing South Africa, we flew to Peru to experience the Dakar Rally first-hand and discovered not all is as it seems...
race. According to the organisers, Amaury Sport Organisation, it is the second biggest racing event in the world after Formula One. This was obvious at the ceremonial start in Lima, where each of the competitors got the chance to bask in glory as crowds cheered when they drove over the start line. The whole ceremony took around seven hours to give each competitor their moment in the sun. Considering what it takes to enter Dakar, this is already an achievement, but the sad truth is many would not even complete the rst stage of this gruelling 10-day event…
Each stage has a start and end point often several hundred kilometres apart. Inbetween, there are stretches of public road where speed limits are strictly enforced. The racing happens only on the timed selective (special) stages and the top vehicles start in intervals of three minutes, whereafter the pauses are shortened.
Factory teams often have support vehicles and trucks loaded with spares that are also entered in the race to help x racecars during stages because the time it would take for help to reach a competitor could spell the end of a podium challenge (our own Giniel de Villiers, for example, hit a rock on stage three, breaking an engine mount and damaging the oil lter, which ultimately proved disastrous for his chances of winning). At the
end of each stage in the bivouac, the team technicians fix problems and service vehicles to be ready for the next stage (except for the marathon stage, where there is no external assistance for two consecutive days).
Dakar is foremost a tactical race. A skilled driver in a fast, reliable car accompanied by a competent navigator is not enough to claim the winner’s trophy. Tactic one in this game of chess on sand: go as fast as possible but try not to win a stage. That seems like a contradiction in terms but the reasoning is sound: the starting order for the next day mimics the previous day’s results and, therefore, the winner is first to enter the next special. With no roads, markings or tracks from fellow competitors, going first can cost lots of time.
Even the best navigators struggle with the road book (directional instructions) and the in-vehicle GPS activates only when the vehicle is close to a waypoint (usually 800 metres away). The vehicle then needs to get within around 90 metres of the waypoint before the GPS will tick off the marker and move on to the next. The leader in the stage does all the hard work and the rest only need to follow the tracks. Start too far back, however, and traffic and dust can become a problem.
Tactic two: catch the leaders. If you start in sixth, you know there are five competitors ahead with three minutes between each. By catching up and overtaking them, three minutes are gained each time. Because no external communication is allowed, this is the only practical way of gauging pace.
Tactic three: protect your lead. If you’re in the fortunate position to be leading overall, make sure you know where the nearest challenger is. The closer you are to that vehicle, the less chance the driver has of dramatically closing the gap. Nasser Al-attiyah, the deserving winner of this year’s race, used this tactic by staying close to a hard-charging Sébastien Loeb in the second week and even moved over near the end of stage eight, allowing Loeb to win to employ tactic one.
Leaving Peru after watching a couple of stages was bittersweet (nothing to do with the potent local cocktail Pisco sour). Being immersed in the atmosphere of Dakar was intensely special and it clings to you long after the final grain of desert sand. I can just imagine the euphoria of team TGRSA when Al-attiyah crossed the finish line and gave it its maiden Dakar victory.
There are rumours Dakar may return to its roots in Africa next year, which would make it easier for locals to attend. Count me in!
01 The short stage 10 was a nervous a air and the relief of finishing was clear on the faces of Nasser Al-a iyah and Mathieu Baumel. 02 Small plane? Nope, just the cockpit of a TGRSA Hilux... Good luck operating the GPS and diagnostic systems while racing over sand at 180 km/h.