The iconic Dakar Rally has officially begun following an opening ceremony in Al Ula, Saudi Arabia, this morning before contestants begin the unforgiving 14-day, 7,891 km cross-country challenge.
It’s the fifth time the event has been held in Saudi Arabia, with dunes, mountains and endless sprawls of desert setting the scene for a rally that organisers say will be “the longest and toughest since the race moved to Saudi Arabia.”
A total of 418 vehicles will compete this year, with the field made up of bikes, cars, quads and trucks running across various classes.
New Zealand’s Francois Beziac will be in the Classics field as co-driver for Georges Garcia in the Chancellor Team New Zealand Land Rover Discovery.
A two-day chrono stage is set to bring the toughest challenge to the field, where they’ll essentially be left to their own devices on January 11-12. When clocks strike at 4 pm on the opening day of this stage, competitors are required to stop at the nearest bivouac, with no connection and therefore visibility to their rivals’ performance, before setting off again at 7 am the following day.
The 2024 Dakar Rally begins at 4.30 pm on Friday (NZ Time) with the prologue from Al Ula, a testing 27 km “Dakar stage in concentrated form in which the competitors will slalom among rocks, on sand tracks and off-track sections.”
Stage 1 brings 414km of racing through the volcanic mineral deposits en route to Al Henakiyah before the field hits the dunes on Sunday during a 463km run to Al Duwadimi.
The first marathon stage comes on Monday, a challenging day that features 733km of driving across 438 km of Special Stages consisting of stony sections, sand and dunes. To compound matters further, mechanics are only permitted to work on cars for two hours at the end of the day before entering park ferme.
A further 631km awaits on Tuesday, with 299km of that time, before a 645 km drive on Wednesday en route to Shubaytah, where the two-day Stage 6 begins.
A deserved rest day on January 13 follows, and action resumes on Sunday with the longest day of the event, an 873km mission to Al Duwadimi, consisting of 483km of timed racing through sprawling canyons.
Four further days of rallying, totalling 2,500km, return the field to Yanbu before a 175km finale determines the victor.
In 2023, Australian Toby Price was pipped by Kevin Benavides on the last stage of the rally, emphasising the importance of the seemingly mundane run to the line.
Header Image: Marcelo Maragni / Red Bull Content Pool
