Over 8,800kms of total distance covered over 12 days of competition. Out of which 4,089kms will be covered flat out by 491 competitors who will be in cars, bikes, trucks and quads. Pretty much every preview of the Dakar Rally starts with rattling off numbers like this but only because it serves to illustrate the event’s magnitude. It’s been only 38 years since the first event but the very human thinking of life being a journey more than a destination has ensured that it keeps attracting those willing to go on that journey. Except, a whole lot faster than the recreational cross-country auto nuts.
A sizeable percentage of these nuts originate from France as per the entry list this year. Fifteen percent, in fact, hail from the country of the event’s founder Thierry Sabine. The same goes for one of the favourites to win the car class, the Peugeot Sport team with their 3008 DKR prototype. Piloting the beast, which replaces the victorious 2008 DKR that won last year, is a three-quarters Gaelic line-up with a lot of collective firepower.
A 12-time, six each on two wheels and four, Dakar Rally winner in Stephane Peterhansel, a WRC legend in nine-time champion Sebastien Loeb and a five-time winner of the event in the bike category, Cyril Despress. And to round things off, Carlos Sainz, a Spaniard who happens to be a two-time WRC champion who has also won the FIA Cross-Country Rally World Cup in 2007 and the 2010 Dakar Rally. Talk about walking into a room with bad intentions!
Trying to prevent Peugeot will be Toyota with their Hilux after they managed to gain what looks like sufficient backing and firepower of their own. Nasser Al-Attiyah, a former two-time winner of the Dakar as well as a two-time WRC-2 champion will bring with him sponsorship from Qatar. Yes, literally the country that he hails from will sponsor the team that he drives for, which is not that hard to believe when you see the natural resource Qatar and other West Asian countries are famous for. Additional backing will also come from Red Bull, which has shown a willingness to invest in motorsport and other extreme sports as an additional means to position itself in the global market.
Toyota also has the services of Nani Roma, a bike winner in 2004 and winner of the car class in 2014, after the Spaniard made a sudden shift from the X-Raid Mini team. Roma’s departure puts the focus squarely on Loeb’s former WRC sparring partner Mikko Hirvonen, a winner of 15 rallies and who likely would have been champion at least once, if not for Loeb.
Over to the bike class, India’s attention will be trained towards Aravind KP and CS Santosh along with the Sherco-TVS and Hero Motosport Rally team, respectively. But looking at the bigger picture, all eyes will be on the expected battle between last year’s winner for KTM, Toby Price and Honda’s Joan Barreda. The Japanese manufacturer has come very close to knocking off the Austrian heavyweights off their Dakar perch and will be hoping to finish the job this time around. With victories and titles aplenty on the racetrack, Honda will not want to play second fiddle off it for much longer.
It all points to a very fun start to the 2017 global motorsport season, with an added draw for India’s next generation of cross-country auto nuts.
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