Dakar Rally - Close, But No Dakar
In January, Diesel Power editor David Kennedy had the chance of a lifetime to travel to Europe with Volkswagen Motorsport to race in the Dakar Rally. Volkswagen was out to prove that its diesel engine technology was capable of winning the event overall, and Diesel Power wanted to be there to document the action.




As some of you have undoubtedly heard, this year's Dakar Rally was canceled a day before the scheduled start due to terrorist threats made against the race. The cancellation was an epic tragedy, and may spell the end of rally racing in Africa. Currently, the organizers of the Dakar race have no plans to return to Africa. The rumor is the Dakar may become a series of rallies that are held around the world. Only time will tell.
365 DAYS BEFORE THE RACE
Preparing for the Dakar takes a team like Volkswagen a full year. It took Editor Kennedy nearly two months to get his passport, visas, and vaccinations in order before his New Year's Day departure. While our plan was to bring you a full race report on the Dakar-we'll have to wait until they run it again next year. In the meantime, we'll show you some of the awesome diesel trucks we found leading up to the race. What is The Dakar?
The Dakar Rally, formerly known as the Paris to Dakar, is a 16-day off-road endurance race that was to celebrate its 30th running this year. The Amaury Sport Association (A.S.O.), which organizes the event, laid out a course that stretched 5,700 miles from Lisbon, Portugal across the Mediterranean Sea, through Africa, and on to Dakar, Senegal.
Nearly 600 competitors in cars, trucks, and motorcycles were scheduled to compete. The race was to be made up of 15 individual one-day races (or stages) and all the competitors camp together each night at a temporary pit stop they call a bivouac. It's in the bivouac that competitors eat, sleep, and repair their vehicles. To make things really interesting, all of the support vehicles, spare parts, and supplies for each race team must be trucked to each bivouac every night.
The route itself is notoriously difficult to traverse. Unlike in American off-road racing where GPS navigation is permitted, Dakar competitors must rely on a GPS-based compass and their own skill to find their way through the African deserts. As motorsports go, the Dakar is one of the most difficult and well-known auto races in the world. As such, it attracts the biggest names in European rally racing, as well as car and truck manufacturers looking to make a name for themselves.
DAY 1, 12:35pm- LOS ANGELES INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
I spent New Year's Day at LAX waiting to board my flight, Lufthansa 457, to Frankfurt, Germany. Volkswagen had arranged to fly me in business class on a Boeing 747-400, in seat 12K. I was to be Volkswagen's guest on this 21-day trip, sort of an embedded journalist, and would be following its four diesel-powered Race Touaregs on the 5,700-mile Dakar Rally down the northwest coast of Africa.




While I waited to board, I watched the ground crew shuffle cargo onto our plane, and wondered if I'd see Robby Gordon's Hummer H3 race truck being loaded on. The 747 I was flying in used a neat FMC loading system to lift cargo sleds up into the hold. It was impressive to watch, and I can see how people ship cars and Day 2, 1:15pm Frankfurt Airport, Germany
It was early afternoon for the locals, but for me it was 4:15am. Sitting in Frankfurt, waiting for a 1:30pm flight that was delayed until 2:00pm was a bit of a culture shock for me. I was in diesel's birthplace, yet I couldn't leave the airport to go explore. I had never been to Germany, so naturally the first thing I did was walk over to one of the newsstands and see if they sold Diesel Power. They didn't-bummer.





As I waited for my connecting flight to Lisbon I noticed there was a guy from Mitsubishi's Dakar crew sitting a few seats away from me. My first thought was he must be a mechanic, or an engineer. It turns out he was one of the team's attorneys. How's that for tough competition? You have to bring your own legal counsel with you to the race! That proves Mitsubishi's level of commitment to the Dakar, and shows why it's been the team to beat since 2001. Unfortunately, Mitsubishi races gasoline-powered vehicles so there wasn't much for us to talk about.
DAY 3, 12:40pm
LISBON, PORTUGAL
The lobby of the Vila Gale hotel in Lisbon, Portugal was Ground Zero for both Volkswagen and Mitsubishi's Dakar teams. I was sitting on a couch in the lobby trying to get on the Internet with my laptop, and listening to a number of conversations in German (Volkswagen) and French (Mitsubishi) all around me. It seemed the two teams are as much colleagues as they are competitors. I was impressed by how calm both teams were. The race drivers and team managers were going over their logistic plans, but there were no frantic phone calls, no last minute disasters, and no talk about working on the cars at all. It was unlike any other pre-race day I have ever seen.
Team Volkswagen wouldn't comment on how many people it had in Lisbon for the event, but my co-driver, and freelance-journalist, Sue Mead, guessed 76 people, and that number was laughingly rejected. When I later suggested 100, even that number was deemed too low.





At 1:30pm local time we headed over with the press Touaregs to the tech inspection, an event aptly named "scrutineering" that was conducted by the A.S.O. sanctioning body. The press cars that we were to drive for the next 2 1/2-weeks were European-spec VW Touaregs with 3.0L V-6 TDI diesel engines. The Touaregs were converted into what VW refers to as "service cars" (basically chase trucks) by installing roll cages, Recaro seats, Fox Racing shocks, a 21-gallon auxiliary fuel tank, two spare tires, an air compressor, and a cargo area where the rear passenger seat should be. I was the driver of record for car number 922, which meant I got my name, blood type, and American flag on the top of the door. Getting in and out of a Touareg with a roll cage was a little tight (because of my size 13 shoes) but it felt manly once I was in it, like the cockpit of a plane.
DAY 3, 2:40pm LISBON, PORTUGAL
Now, the excitement of what I was about to do was really setting in. There were 14 service Touaregs parked on the side of the Tagus river in front of the Belm Cultural Center. We were waiting in line for a group tech inspection of all the Volkswagen service vehicles. Along with the 13 other Touaregs like mine there were 4 Volkswagen four-wheel drive Multivans (with race seats, roll cages, and BFGoodrich All-Terrain tires), and 12 MAN TGA and TGS trucks. If you figure each of these trucks seat 3 people (the four vans seat 4), there were more than 90 people just in the support vehicles.
Interestingly enough the Germans call these huge MAN trucks "M-A-N", where they say each letter individually like we would say "GTO". The three letters stand for the name Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nrnberg. This German truck and engine company is a very prestigious commercial vehicle manufacturer in Europe, similar to the American company, International.
If I had to guess, I would say there were more vehicles entered in the Dakar than in a typical SCORE Baja 1000, but the crowd seemed smaller. Of course, the Dakar's tech inspection isn't open to the public like the SCORE tech inspection is. There were a lot of places that I simply wouldn't have been allowed to go if I didn't have a press pass.
DAY 3, 7:30pm
LISBON, PORTUGAL
I had no idea tech inspection would go like that. By 7:30pm local time I'd been through a virtual carnival of booths and document stations to get my insurance worked out, my tollbooth pass, two GPS systems, prove that our VW had a satellite phone, and get tickets for the ferry that would take the Touareg and me across the Mediterranean.Things I wish I had brought with me to the tech inspection:
* A backpack
* A flashlight
* My Gerber Diesel multi-tool
* A video camera
* A receipt for the 42 Euro ($61.00) serial cable I had to buy so the IntelliTrac system that would track our speed and location would work. At the time I didn't know how much 42 euros was in U.S. dollars, but it was all the money I had on me.
* A complete use of the French and German language.
I mention the language skills because one of the VW guys said that I "speak very American English". I still don't know if that was a good or a bad thing. He asked me if I knew what the most common language in the world was.
I said, "Spanish?"
He said, "No, broken English."
For the record, I bought (and brought) a Surefire flashlight for the trip with extra batteries, cleaned and brought my LED headlamp, and Volkswagen even gave us an LED head lamp. I also took along my Gerber multi-tool and a fold ing knife. I had just left all that stuff in the hotel room because I thought tech inspection would be run like a SCORE race. The "scrutineering" was more like signing up for college courses, and then going out to take your driver's license test. The French officials can be brutal, and the Germans have little love for them.
DAY 3, 9:22 PM
LISBON, PORTUGAL
Our car, 922, cleared through scrutineering without a hitch and we were back on our way to the hotel by 9:30pm. After a team dinner at a local restaurant I was back in my hotel room uploading photos and sending off emails. The time change was still messing with my internal clock. At around 1:10am (5:10pm in Los Angeles) I took the first half of a Dukoral vaccine that was supposed to protect me from Cholera. I was told by my newfound German friends that it would taste terrible. They weren't kidding.
DAY 4, 10:12 AM
LISBON, PORTUGAL
I arrived in the hotel lobby early that morning, and immediately could tell something was wrong. Volkswagen had scheduled a press conference for noon, but I could tell that the vibe in the lobby wasn't excitement.
It looked like the entire VW team was there. There was a sea of blue jackets collecting by the revolving door, and some of the team leaders were having small group discussions. I had never seen the whole team gathered in one place before. When I asked one of them what was going on, he said that there were rumors about the race being called off.
At the time, it sounded like there was some drama playing out over the route the race was going to take through Mauritania. From what our German team was telling us, the A.S.O was trying to decide if we could still go through Mauritania.
I was aware that four French travelers had been killed in Mauritania the week before, but I was under the impression that the safety issues for the race had been resolved before I left the U.S.. Now we were down to the day before the race was to start, and the French government, the A.S.O., and Mauritania were unable to agree on how safe the current route was. A rumor that the race was to be canceled quickly began floating around. Our VW representative said he didn't know how long it would take the three parties to decide the outcome. He said it is like "when they choose a new Pope in Rome. All we can do is wait to see the smoke. And see if it is white or gray." Official word was to come from the A.S.O. at noon. It was not looking good.
DAY 4, 12:17 PM
LISBON, PORTUGAL
The press conference had just finished. We listened to the A.S.O. Dakar Director, Etienne Lavicne, speak in French and got the translation via headphones.
The Dakar was canceled after the French government deemed the threat was too great to allow the race to begin. The A.S.O. made it clear that the threat was not just in Mauritania, but rather to the whole race. When the French government pulled its support, it invoked "public interest" as its rationale. The A.S.O. is a French organization, so it did not feel it could continue the rally against the recommendation of the French government.The race was not going to be run. We were in shock. Hundreds of vehicles and thousands of people were no longer heading south to Dakar. Now the scramble was on to figure out how to get everyone, and everything home.
DAY 4, 1:43 PM
LISBON, PORTUGAL
The race vehicles that had gone through scrutineering were all impounded. The drivers needed paperwork to take the race vehicles back out, but many of them didn't have any place to take the vehicles now that the race wasn't going to run. Many of the motorcycle riders didn't even have their helmets.
After a day of shocking news, the larger teams were steaming ahead and making plans for getting everyone and every vehicle out of town. By my count, that meant at least 50 vehicles for Volkswagen alone.
The original plan was for everyone to check out of Lisbon and race into Spain. Now that the race was canceled, Volkswagen had to reserve dozens of rooms at another hotel just to give its people a place to stay.
I spent the rest of the day soaking up all the Dakar vehicles that were still in the impound. NASCAR race driver Robby Gordon and his teammate Ron Bailey showed up with their Hummer H3s. They were just being driven in from the airport. Gordon had to fly the H3s over to Lisbon just to get them there in time for the race. The trucks left LAX Airport on December 30th. Gordon and his team left on January 1st, a few hours before I did.
The Hummers looked like stealth fighters in a world of crop dusters. The locals loved them, and one guy was trying to buy them on the spot. Gordon said he "would never sell one of his trucks again", as back in the U.S. his biggest off-road competition are the teams that campaign his old trucks.
DAY 5, 11:50 AM
PORTELA AIRPORT, LISBON, PORTUGAL
I boarded a TAP airline flight to Newark, New Jersey. I was scheduled to be home in Los Angeles at 10:00pm Pacific Standard time. As beautiful as Portugal was, it was time to move on as Lisbon seemed like the wrong place to be without a race to run in. I can only hope that I get to return to next year's Dakar Rally, and that Volkswagen will still be looking to be the first diesel-powered vehicle to win the race.
ADVICE WE GOT BEFORE WE WENT TO DAKAR
Take lots of sterile baby wipes, and keep your hands clean. It's no fun feeling less than 100% when you still have to make the distance. It's difficult just because of the sheer length of the race. You have to find a pace that doesn't smash your vehicle to pieces, and yet you have to get into bivouac early enough to rest, eat, and make necessary repairs. Get this right and you won't go wrong. A bad day has a terrible effect that is difficult to recover from. Other than that, just keep smiling and enjoy the ride. Before you know it, you will be by the pool at the Meridian Hotel in Dakar thinking about how to get on the following year's rally!
If you wish to impress the locals, try speaking French. Even the basics will be appreciated. Take a box of pens and give them to the children. A simple "stylo" will make for one happy school kid.
Steven Rogers
Dakar Competitor, 2001 and 2002
It'll be cold. The nights can suck waiting in the bivouac. Make sure you travel light enough to keep all your stuff with you, all the time. If you get separated from your diddy bag it might not get back to you for quite some time, if ever.
Be a bit careful with your camera around military, especially at bases or posts, definitely ports with military.I always traveled with Tabasco sauce. There is not a bacteria in the world that can survive in Tabasco. I used it on everything.
Their toilet paper sucks over there, so bring a mega roll of the good stuff.
Drink tonic water instead of soda. It's usually available everywhere in the hospitality tents and contains quinine. It's always good to have a bit of quinine in your system when in a third world country to protect you against various viral maladies. Stay away from green leafy veggies; make sure everything is cooked well. Bring Imodium just in case, and stay hydrated with bottled water. Use bottled water for everything.
They have a great support system for the media and you'll have a ball. Travel with the group and try not to sneak off in attempt to get the killer shots-they just might be.Larry Rae Professional Logistician
INSIDE VOLKSWAGEN'S RACE TOUAREG 2
Volkswagen's secret diesel-powered weapon is the Race Touareg 2. It resembles the production Touareg that it's based on, but shares very little with the street version beyond the name. SPECIFICATIONS
Engine: 2.5L inline five cylinder diesel
Turbocharger: Two turbochargers mounted in series with an intercooler
Power: 280 hp
Torque: 405 lb-ft
Engine Management: Bosch
Drivetrain Layout: Full-time four-wheel drive
Transmission: Five-speed sequentially shifted manual
Clutch: Hydraulically operated three-plate ceramic
Differentials: Three mechanical with viscous locking capability
Suspension: Double wishbone with two coilover shocks per wheel
Steering: Power-assisted rack-and-pinion
Brakes: 12.6-inch ventilated disc brakes
Wheels: 16x7-inch
Tires: BFGoodrich 235/85R16
Frame: Steel tube chassis
Body Work: Two-door carbon-fiber composite bodywork
Weight: 4,171 pounds
Wheelbase: 111 inches
Acceleration: 60-62 mph in 6.9 seconds
Top speed: 118 mph
KING OF DAKAR
Here's another Russian diesel monster. It's a 730 hp 4x4 Kamaz Sport Truck that has dominated off-road rallies for the last 15 years. The recipe is simple; it's got a turbocharged 17.2L V-8 diesel, leaf sprung suspension,49-inch tires, and a top speed of over 102 mph. Not bad for a truck that weighs around 16,000 pounds. You've got to see this truck in action. Go to You Tube and search for "Kamaz Dakar".
RUSSIAN TATRA TRUCKS
Traditionally, Russian trucks have faired well in off-road rallies because as one German pointed out, "Russians need good trucks, because they have the worst roads." The Tatras are serious contenders in Dakar. This 815-2 ZOR45 12.400 4x4.1 model features a 15.8L V-8 twin-turbo Deutz diesel engine that makes 700 hp. Its top speed is 96 mph, and it rides on 49-inch tall tires. Now for the shocking part: this is the support truck! The race Tatra has an 816 hp engine, weighs 22,000 pounds, and tops out at 102 mph. Check them both out at www.loprais.com.




EARTH CRUSHER
The Ukrainian KrAZ 5133BE is supposed to be a cross-country truck suitable for commercial or military use. Weighing in at 24,250 pounds the truck relies on a turbocharged 14.8L V-8 diesel rated at 360 hp and 965 lb-ft of torque to turn 52-inch tall tires. It's capable of fording through four feet of water. We can only imagine what it would have done in the sand.

Photo Gallery: Dakar Rally - Volkwagen Race Touareg 2 - Diesel Power Magazine



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