ADVrider.com
With the 2023 Dakar Rally just around the corner, organizers presented their final update on the route this morning. Looks like we ought to have a tough year ahead of us, with a couple of key changes to the course.
Once again, the rally will run entirely in Saudi Arabia. This year’s race runs December 31-January 14, covering 8,549 km. Of that total, 4,706 km are special stages. This year, 365 vehicles are entered into the main rally event, and another 100ish are entering the Dakar Classic, which features vintage 4x4s from the race’s cigarette logo-festooned glory days.
The rally is part of the W2RC and FIM Cross-Country Rallies championships again, which means riders will be able to re-enter to gain points after exiting a stage, but those re-entered riders cannot win the event.
This year’s event starts at the rally’s new Sea Camp in the east of the country, with scrutineering and a prologue running there. Some of this year’s event will cover territory we’ve seen before, but the Dakar will head into Saudi Arabia’s Empty Quarter for four days of racing; no doubt we’ll see plenty of high-stakes drama in the sand dunes of that empty wasteland. The riders will also rip up beaches along the Arabian Gulf in the later stages, and since Stage 11 and Stage 12 are mashed together for a late-race marathon stage, we expect to see some late-night wrenching heroics and probably some heartbreak as rider struggle against the tight constraints of this locked-down period, with no outside help allowed.
You can see the whole route here.
Sam Sunderland is the 2022 champion, and as the winner of the 2022 FIM Cross Country Rallies title, he’s got lots of momentum entering the ’23 Dakar. But the previous year’s results mean nothing when you’re facing the relentless time crunch of the race, not to mention the mechanical gremlins that can arise at any time.
We’ll be covering the race as always this year, with regular updates telling you not just the winners and drop-outs, but also other behind-the-scenes stories.
The post Organizers Reveal Details Of 2023 Dakar appeared first on Adventure Rider.
