Beez' Blog of Moto Greatness - The Dakar Rally 2015

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In just a few short days the greatest motorsport event of all time will be upon us! Starting Jan 4th from Buenos Aires, Argentina and ending in the same city on Jan 17th this year's route will cover over 9000km in 13 stages and will also have stages in Chile and Boliva. In my country, the United States, the Dakar Rally barely exists. Ask almost anyone and they will have no idea what I'm talking about however the rally is hugely popular in other parts of the world ant is televised in over 190 countries. Since I am in the minority here among motorsports fans I will use any excuse to tell people about the Dakar Rally because it is so freakin' epic!

The Dakar Rally is what's known as a rally-raid or stage rally. Competitors race against the clock over an unmarked course using a paper route sheet and a compass. The day typically starts before dawn, the racers will leave camp and ride an untimed liaison to the start point. They are flagged off at regular intervals and must hit various checkpoints throughout the stage until the day's finish. Then there is often another liaison to the next bivouac. The stage's route sheet is in scroll form for the motorcycles and they mount it in a device above the handlebars which can scroll forward or back using buttons next to the hand grip. For compass they use an electronic repeater that tell them the compass heading they are going mounted next to the route sheet device. They also have an electronic odometer mounted up there. The route sheet will tell them something like "go heading 135 for 66km then turn left to heading 166" then they scroll to the next instruction. All this is done while at speed and the quads, cars and trucks do it too although the cars and trucks have navigators.

There are many classes but it can be broken down in to 4 basic classes: motorcycles, quads, cars and trucks. The truck class is big, BIG super badass 4 wheel drive trucks based on commercial trucks from manufacturers like Kamaz, Tatra, DAF and Renault. They are amazing! The car class has several sub classes with buggies, 4WD SUVs and 2WD Baja style pick-ups. The dominant team has been the Minis for the past few years but other strong teams are the South African Toyotas and Robby Gordon's Gordini (which is based on a stadium truck). New this year is the Peugot team with top drivers Stephane Peterhansel and Carlos Sainz and past Dakar motorcycle winner Cyril Despres.

No matter what country you're from I am sure there is some one racing this year's Dakar from your homeland. For USA we only have Robby Gordon in the cars and Tony Gera and Antonio Narino in the bikes. I'll have more detailed posts as the rally gets underway but for now here is the official promo video.

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