Dakar 2026 has begun!

 

I completely missed Dakkar this year

I don't know what happened but Dakkar completely slipped my mind this year. 

What kind of motorsports fan am I?

Well, they never show the trucks enough for my liking anyway so I guess I didn't miss too much. Next year I'll pay more attention though.

I really only watch rally for the trucks

 

(from topgear.com)

Trucks, by their nature, are generally rather large, quite useful for carrying things and as slow as waiting for a YouTuber to get to the point.

But then an unofficial race within a race kicked off: who’d be first to set up camp at that day’s bivouac? After all, you’re not going to be a support driver for a rally raid without some kind of affinity towards racing, so if the opportunity to blast across the empty desert presents itself – and your mates are in similar trucks – who isn’t going to give into temptation?

Thus the Truck category was born. If anyone could be considered its creator, it’d be Jan de Rooy, who started experimenting with the truck layout in the 1980s, resulting in a 10-tonne, twin-engined, 1200bhp DAF – with a total engine displacement of 23.2 litres and a top speed that outdid Ari Vatanen’s rally car. Holy moly.

Even now, the sheer numbers – and the spectacle – are every bit as staggering as they were in the late Eighties. But, being an FIA-certified category, even this level of lunacy is classified and shoehorned into a rulebook.

T5 is for all trucks, with decimal-pointed suffixes nailing down the detail – T5.1 for series production, T5.2 for modified and T5.3 for support trucks that are allowed on the rally route itself. Oh, and the bigger support trucks that actually perform the original truck role – supporting the racers from the bivouac – are technically classed as T6, but they take easier routes to each day’s destination to set up camp and put the kettle on. Bet they still have their own, unregulated competition though…

Dakar 2024 has begun

The most narrow racetrack in the world - Rally del Rubinetto

More Camel trophy

 

This 1989 Land Rover One Ten Won The Toughest Off-Road Event Ever

 

 Joe and Bob Ives are legends in the Land Rover world for their exploits during 1989's Camel Trophy event – and we've driven their winning One Ten!

(see full article here)

https://buy.motorious.com/articles/features/349973/video-the-1989-camel-trophy-winning-land-rover/

The old Camel Trophy days

 

Dakar starting soon

Dakar trucks

I'm always intrigued when I see these giant trucks driving thru the desert and such during the Dakar rally.

Dakar Rally

(motorroids.com)

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/

Pharaons Rally

The Pharaons Rally is Egypt’s version of the world-famous Dakar and a thrilling endurance race across the desert. The goal is to cross the Sahara Desert in seven days, taking a 3,000 km circular route that begins under the gaze of the Sphinx in Giza, ending back in the lively Egyptian capital of Cairo. The dune defying desert-race has literally just kicked off – here’s a video update with some of the highlights so far.

The rally attracts serious big-money competitors from around the world, and involves a variety of vehicles from monster trucks to motorbikes and quads. If you’re no professional racer but a keen off-road motorist you can participate in the rally non-competitively. It is possible to rent a 4×4 and guide to follow the rally and join up with the racers after each leg at the campsite bivouac tent.

www.pharaonsrally.com

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Camel Trophy Events and Destinations

Year	Destination	Vehicle used	Winning Country
1980	Trans-Amazonican Highway, Brazil	Jeep CJ-6s	Germany (the only country to compete)
1981	Sumatra, Indonesia	2-door Land Rover Range Rovers	Germany (the only country to compete)
1982	Papua New Guinea	2-door Land Rover Range Rovers	Italy
1983	Zaire	Series III 88"	Holland
1984	Brazil	Land Rover 110	Italy
1985	Borneo	Land Rover 90	Germany
1986	Australia	Land Rover 90	France
1987	Madagascar	Range Rover Turbo Diesel	Italy
1988	Sulawesi	Land Rover 110	Turkey
1989	The Amazon	Land Rover 110	UK
1990	Siberia (USSR)	Discovery 3 door 200 Tdi	Holland
1991	Tanzania/Burundi	Discovery 200 Tdi	Turkey
1992	Guyana	Discovery 200 Tdi	Switzerland
1993	Sabah-Malaysia	Discovery 200 Tdi	USA
1994	Argentina, Paraguay, Chile	Discovery 200 Tdi	Spain
1995	Mundo Maya	Discovery 300 Tdi	Czech Republic
1996	Kalimantan	Discovery 300 Tdi	Greece
1997	Mongolia	Discovery 300 Tdi	Austria
1998	Tierra del Fuego	Freelander	France
2000	Tonga-Samoa	Water based event	South Africa     

Camel Trophy History 1980 - 2000

(Pangaea-expeditions.com)

Camel Trophy. At one time considered the last "great adventure" was an annual vehicle based 4x4 competitino undertaken annually from 1981, and by boat in 2000. Its purpose was to voyage into harsh lands and put man and machine to the test. The first Camel Trophy, held in 1981, was a trip on the TransAmazonian highway under taken by a group of Germans in Jeep CJ6s. Despite not finishing the trek, it captured the imagination of adventurers across the world. The following year, and every year after until 1998 they used Land Rovers to complete their journeys.

 

Nearly every year, the organizers of Camel Trophy sought to challenge the competitors with a new and different destination, often times being the first ever vehicle traverse of a given route. However frequently it was not enough to just do the expedition, the masachistic minds behind Camel Trophy decided to do many of the routes durning the regions monsoon or rainy season. Take for example the 1985 event in Borneo when participants frequently were only able to travel a distance of 5 km a day despite being behind the wheel all day long and long into the night.

 

Throughout the duration of Camel Trophy, the full range of Solihull's finest vechilces were challenged, starting with the Range Rover in 1982, to the Series IIIs, 90s and 110s and the Discovery in the early 1990s.The final competition vehicle was the Freelander which participated in Land Rover's swan song event in 1998, Tierra del Fuego.

 

By the last years of the event, the focus had drifted away from the vehicles and towards "adventure sports" and special tasks such as kayaking, canoeing and mountain biking. Partially for this reason, Land Rover and Worldwide Brands (the owners of Camel Trophy) decided to part ways after the 1998 event, Tierra del Fuego.

 

However, the true spirit of Camel Trophy is kept alive by Land Rover enthusiasts everywhere. Limited edition coffee table books celebrating the event frequently sell for hunrdeds of dollars, if you can find them. The Camel Trophy Owners Club, a group dedicated to the ownership of ex-Camel Trophy vehicles also keeps the event alive with their documentation and celebration of the great adventure. Their vehicles range from Defenders to Freelanders, from well used competition vehicles to well-cared for marshall vehicles.

 

For a more in depth look at the vehicles and equipment which participated in the Camel Trophy, please see Alex's excellent website Camel-Discovery.com and it's companion website Camel-Defender.com

 



Camel Trophy Kalimantan 1996, Defender 110

 

http://www.pangaea-expeditions.com/galleries/cameltrophy/index.html

Land Rover used in the Camel Trophy competition