Dakar beckons

The 45th edition of the Dakar Rally will take place for the fourth time in Saudi Arabia from December 31 to January 15.

Details of the event were unveiled in a presentation programme by race director David Castera.

The route is set between two seas and made up of 15 days of racing, including a four-day excursion into the Empty Quarter, with a total distance of 8,549 km, of which 4,706 km will be raced against the clock.

A total of 365 vehicles are expected at the starting line by the Red Sea.

Excitement is building as the big challenge approaches, which is also likely to give the riders, drivers, co-pilots and crews some butterflies in the stomach.

‘Be Afraid’ seems to be the message of the route for the 2023 Dakar, in light of the challenging programme, including 14 real stages preceded by a prologue contested around the Sea Camp, the first new feature of the rally’s day-to-day life.

Although they have already encountered the shores of the Red Sea since 2020, for the first time the competitors will be brought together for the entire period of scrutineering on an XXL bivouac, in what promises to be a friendly atmosphere. They will then get their teeth in to the sporting challenge as they reacquaint themselves with the already familiar sites of AlUla, Ha’il or Riyadh, before spending four days in the as yet unexplored desert of the Empty Quarter, “this gigantic zone in which sand is king, especially in its most majestic form: dunes,” says David Castera.

Throughout the rally, driving skills, navigational talents and aptitude for extreme endurance will be tested especially during the marathon stage towards the very end of the rally.

It is likely that at the end of this testing and tricky exercise the final race hierarchy will have been decided: between the KTMs ridden by Kevin Benavides and Matthias Walkner, the GasGas bikes of title holder Sam Sunderland and his team-mate Dany Sanders, the Hondas of Adrien Van Beveren, Ricky Brabec or Pablo Quintanilla, or even the Husqvarna ridden by Skyler Howes or the Sherco of Lorenzo Santolino.

In the car category, it will also be a test of truth for the hybrid drive Audis driven by Stéphane Peterhansel, Carlos Sainz and Mattias Ekström, all determined to go after the title that will be defended by Nasser Al-Attiyah, the Toyota team leader accompanied by Yazeed Al-Rajhi and Giniel De Villiers, whilst the Bahrain-owned BRXs driven by Sébastien Loeb, Guerlain Chicherit and Orly Terranova also seem equipped to do battle at the summit of the general rankings.

The struggle between the discipline’s heavyweights will be all the more crucial, given that it kicks off the second season of the World Rally-Raid Championships, the new world championship format, which in 2022, gave rise to an enthralling duel between Al-Attiyah and Loeb and a demonstration by Sam Sunderland on two wheels.