Since 1978, the Dakar Rally has been carving new and wiping away old lines on the palms of its contestants. Over the years. many bones have disappeared and grown as the rally tests the grit of Men, Women and their machines while they race against time, fatigue, and forces of nature to cover extreme distances on mostly non-existent routes on a map. Such is the extreme nature of the event, only a few have triumphed, many took the ultimate fall, and even those who managed to see the finish line are regarded as one of the greatest.
The event borrowed its name from the destination where the first ever rally culminated in 1978. It ran from Paris, France, to Dakar in Senegal. In 2008, security threats in Mauritania led to the cancellation of the rally that year and races since 2009 have been held in South America. Open to amateurs and professionals alike, the former typically add up to about eighty percent of the participants.
The terrain which participants encounter during the Dakar is much tougher than what one would witness in conventional rallying. There’s not much information about what lies ahead and participants and their machines go through an extreme endurance test, which they have to face every single day for two weeks straight! The distances of each stage covered vary from 273 km being the shortest to a bone shrinking 907 km! The categories of machines which participants may enrol under are Bikes/Quad, Car/SXS(SSVs/UTVs) and Truck.
All the vehicles which hit the dirt during the rally are purpose-built to take on the challenges of the event rather than being modified on-road vehicles. Most of the spectacular helicopter shots you’d see from the event will include vehicles attacking dunes, rocks, mud, gravel, inclines, sheer drops and nearly everything that will break normal axles and everyday bones within seconds.
For its 40th edition, the Dakar Rally will be held in South America this year for the 10th time. It will start in Lima, Peru, allow a rest day in La Paz, Bolivia, and then make the contestants gun it towards the finish line in Córdoba, Argentina. Spread across 14 stages, the event will cover a distance of almost 9,000 km, among which, 7 stages are 100% dunes or off-road. With over 4,500 km of special stages, there will be one marathon stage for all categories, another for bikes and quads only, and participants and their machines will spend more than 5 days at an altitude of more than 3,000 metres in the Andes!
follow the Dakar Rally daily here:
https://www.dakar.com/en/
