Crazy Dakar

[Polux]

Originally Posted by Factor

Dunno why you are ranting about the shortening of sages and the impact on the results etc. Its all clear in the Supp Regs for the event - like the refuelling.

Never said it was illegal, just sad and bad for the race.

Maybe you like it, a race that was supposed to be an adventure and the more tough on the planet with most of his stages shortened not because the best cannot do them but because the worst cannot do it?

So we have the toughest race made to the measure not to the best but to the worst riders that which to make it? an the difference is just huge.

I don't like it and the same as been said by the specialized press regarding that and the "confusions" with the classifications that situation allows (never knowing when it will be the place where they will stop the race).

Regarding rules that allow to shorten the race if the conditions are dangerous or impossible, one thing is doing it once in a race, on exceptional conditions, other thing is to make that the normal situation.

[Polux]

The race for the bikes has finished and we have a new Dakar winner, the Australian Toby Price that is the 1st non European and only the 2th non Latin to win in bikes since the beginning of Dakar, 39 years ago.

KTM once more dominated the race with two KTM on 1st and 2th and not three because MEO the French 5 times world enduro champion had yesterday a nasty fall...lost lots of time and went back on the classification.

Yesterday I saw that he lost lots of times on the beginning of Yesterday's stage and the reason was that Toby Price (his team mate) had asked him to wait for him on the track to have a escort on the special. That finished badly for Meo with that fall and all possibility he had to win the 3th place to Quintanilha a thing that on normal circumstances I believe he would be able to do.

On the standard motorcycle class (Marathon) the winner was the Portuguese Mario Patrão in KTM that today made a fantastic special (for a Marathon bike) finishing on 10th leaving Gyenes (that was also very fast), the one he was fighting with for leadership, at about one minute.

The fight for the the win on the Marathon class was the closest on all rally finishing Patrão and Gyenes in 13th and 14th overall, having Patrão an advantage of only 4 minutes. Gyenes was leading till two days ago.

On the Malle class, the one that should be called the Dakar class, where any assistance is not allowed, the first with an huge advantage was the Dutch Dakar veteran and ex GP motorcycle racer, Van Den Goorbergh. He had already made the Dakar on bike (several times, on car several times and once in Truck) and last year on this class.

Regarding today's stage the fastest was the Chilean Quintanilha that was defending is 3th place from Benavides, the Argentinian that was 2th on the stage. 3th was the Portuguese Rodrigues, 4th Price and 5th Svitko.

Overall and on the Elite class, the 1st on the Dakar rally was Price (KTM), the 2th Svitko (KTM), the 3th Quintanilha (Huskvarna) the 4th Benavides (Honda) the 5th Rodrigues (Yamaha).

A special reference to the extraordinaire performance of the Slovenian Svitko, the 2th and the only one among the 5 first that was not a factory official rider with an official racing machine. Chapeau to him.

Even if there are still a dominance of KTM, with the two first and 5 out of the 10 first, for the first time I can remember there are on the first 5 four different brands of motorcycles. That is huge and very good for the competition. Sherco, without any really top rider had also done 3th and 5th on two stages and I believe that with a top rider could be on the fight for the race, so regarding all that, good news for the next Dakar.

Some images of yesterday stage:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfIKEhFL1sE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cKm_zDPnSs

[Polux]

The Dakar has finished and all the winners are found but before talking about the others let me come back to motorcycles and MEO. I was really impressed knowing that he took almost the double time of the fast riders on the last stage. I can only Imagine the conditions and suffering that he had to take for finishing the Dakar, even losing 3 positions and all hope to fight for 3th.

On cars Peterhansel equaled the number of his victories in cars with the ones he had on motorcycles, 12 in all. For me it is awesome already a guy that has made 12 Dakars, a guy that was able to win 12 of them on different vehicles is almost unthinkable.

No wonder he is known as "Mister Dakar" a title that is certainly well deserved. I wonder when he will pass to the organization of the race, as many former winners had done, Certainly we will have a better Dakar. Nobody knows more about the Dakar then Peterhansel, maybe except another no less incredible guy, the Japanese Yoshimasa Sugawara.

Do you know the guy? If you are used to follow the Dakar you surely now him because this is his 33th Dakar. He started racing in motorcycles, than cars then trucks. Curiously, on the 3 first years back on the 80's, he never managed to finish with the motorcycle but since then, on cars and trucks he finished all editions except two being by far the guy with more Dakars finished.

Never managed a 1st overall in any category but his small truck had been 4 times 2th. On this edition his Hino 74 year's old Sugawara was 2th again on the class but he should not mind about that because another Sugawara on another Hino won the class, his son Teruhito.

Back to Peterhansel, that today and as he uses to do when he has an advantage that allow that, he was really slow, making only the 13th time, assuring that he had not any problem on the last stage, but losing only 7m37s for the 2th. 1st on the stage was Loeb showing that out of the dunes he is the fastest. Now he needs to know how to drive fast out of the road

The 2th was Hirvonen that has become really fast (Mini), the 3th was Al-Attiya (Mini) and the 4th surprisingly another ex motercycle ridder, Despres (Peugeot) that has as co pilot another bike rider, Castera.

Despres took some time for being really fast on a car. For me he started to manage that this year, on the dunes and now on a less out of the road stage he is showing that he can lose only 1m36 to Loeb and I believe Loeb is going to need several years to be as fast or safe as him on the dunes.

I bet Despres, after having won the Dakar 5 times on motorcycles will be a main contender on the next years on cars.

On the Dakar classification 1st Peterhansel (Peugeot), 2th Al-Attiyah (mini), 3th De Villiers (Toyota), 4th Hirvonen (Mini), 5th Poulter (Toyota).

The results don't show it but the truth is that the Peugeot showed a real superiority in speed regarding the Peugeot and without that freak accident with the Sainz's case of the gearbox we would have probably two Peugeot on the leading places.

Al-attiyah and De Villiers made a great Dakar but never had a chance to win it due to the overall lower performance of their cars. I hope next year their cars to be more competitive. That's also true that against Sainz and Peterhansel with good cars it is hard to win.

A pity that odd case with Sainz's car. He deserved to be able to fight till the finish with Peterhansel.

The first production car comes in 33th place and the winner of the class was Nicolas Gibon on a Toyota VDJ 200. Contrary to the motorcycles very few production cars here or even modified production cars. Almost all are racing cars and that gives a special light to the 33th place out of the 169 that started the race. Chapeau

On the quads the two Argentinian brothers Patronelly took 1st and 2th giving a big joy to all Argentinian fans, The third was the South African Baragwanath and the 4th the Russian Karyakin.

On trucks Gerard de Roy (IVECO) won his 2th Dakar with a great driving leaving the Tatra of the Russian Mardeeve at more than an hour. the third was Villagra, the Argentinian rally man that made a fast adaptacion to the huge IVECO and the 4th was Stacey on the M.A.N. leaded the race for some time but bad luck took him any chance of victory (Stacey won the final stage).

Anyway this year the fight was bigger with several brands of trucks on the lead and winning stages. More and more competitive this category and more spectacular.

Some more movies of the Yesterday's stage:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdK77-iaOlA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPuehhN-eSs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wIf7-u9Tzk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWJumLW3JuI

[Polux]

This Dakar is over and I hope that the ones that are being following this thread, with almost 2000 hits on a subject not sailing related, had some fun doing it. But I guess I would not be doing it next year: Not many Dakar enthusiasts around here. I hope I have contributed to create some more.

I hope next Dakar would be a better one with more navigation and one were stages will only be shortened if they are not possible to be made. This year among the top riders nobody got a penalization for a missing way point. That was as easy as that.

Regarding pilots not to be happy with how the things have been done this year, with all that confusion about classifications due to many shortened stages and the classification attributed not to be the one of the final of the stage but some regarding an arbitrary previous control point, most pilots did not make it public and I heard about that on private comments that were made public but Laia the girl that made a fantastic Dakar on his KTM was not afraid to talk publicly:

"I was unable to let my navigation skills do the talking. For starters, they shortened the stage that suited me best, the one in Fiambalá. I lost big time that day because I wasn't one of the 12 motorcycle riders allowed to keep their times. What's more, I didn't manage to make the difference in the first week, which was very much like a rally and not enough Dakar-style"

Also the winner of the Malle class says about the same:

During the first week...There were fast tracks, no navigation at all… It wasn't very stimulating.... I like it when things get complicated and technical, and the second week was harder in this regard, even though some specials were shortened.

And regarding Dakar and the conditions they used to be raced I will post an interview with Peterhansel regarding his best memory of the Dakar, the first win of course, with fabulous Images of those days. He won the race on a sand storm when they could hardly see the track....today it would be suspended

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u3Zb-QnWQWU

That was the time of the monstrous 750/900cm3 heavy motorcycles that could go at 200km/h on the desert. They costed the live of several riders but they certainly made us dream, those big Yamaha Super Teneré and the Cagiva Elephant. Here a memory of those days and of Danny Laporte, the best American ever on the Dakar:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JwM2wzRnJIs

But that's enough nostalgia of an adventurous Dakar that will probably never get back. The world has changed and with terrorism around that is not possible anymore.

Last movies and pictures of this edition of the Dakar here:
Dakar Rally 2016: Rest day to Stage 13 – in pictures | Sport | The Guardian
And some videos with the best images:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lie37fqQ86E

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34RWQgnJrsE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Whd4aPYZKDI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFQvjen6b0s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvqTO8uafvE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL0CMvEbA1E

[Factor]

Originally Posted by Polux

No doubt Toby Price is a hell of a rider and this year only three pilots managed to drive consistently at his pace but he is showing that he still has a lot to learn about the best tactic to win the Dakar.

.

So I spoke to one of Toby's crew the other day I put your theory of Toby not understanding Dakar tactics and needing to learn a lot.

He laughed so hard he damn near wet himself.

His exact words were "does this tool even know how to spell Dakar"

He said that the KTM tacticians were super impressed with Toby's ability to follow their race and stage plans to an almost metronomic precision. I specifically asked about the days he put the big ones in, made great jumps, and he indicated that they were targeting a 40 minute lead the day they got 39.

So - thats a fact - not an opinion.

No doubt however you will know more than the entire factory KTM team.

[Polux]

That is not an opinion but a fact that any major racing champion will confirm: you don't get the best chances to win taking unnecessary risks when your adversaries are at a safe distance, but controlling them.

Not me that says that but the 12 times winner of the Dakar, Peterhansel or the biggest car race champions, among them Fangio that was the first (I know off) that stated that.

It is just common sense, not needed to be a genius to figure that out, but to have the coolness to do that on a race, instead of keeping pushing, it is needed a lot of experience and a good sense of strategy. The primary instinct is to keep on riding as fast as one can even if the adversaries are far away. One can get away with that, but it is not certainly the best way to maximize the possibilities of winning a race.

[Factor]

Wow - direct from the crew that he did what he was told but you cannot still admit you were wrong about it. Wow.

[Factor]

And Toby wins another Dakar. In spite of his broken wrist (and his failure to understand how to ride a race. :-)

[IslandHopper]

Check out old mates (6) crash trying to put a time on Toby, it would have knocked the hell out of him, he did well to get going again....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_Pjtqd7va0