Category:Dakar Rally

A rally-raid is a discipline of mechanical sport, which is similar to the traditional off-road rally, but which differs from it by the duration of the stages (one "special stage" per day, often of several hundred kilometers), by the duration of the race (from five to fifteen days against two or three for off-road rallies), as well as by special stages most often contested off-piste, on areas without marked paths (desert, etc.) and a route often reaching several thousand kilometers.

The races use navigation, which is done via a simple compass, a GPS or a road-book provided by the organizers, according to the race regulations.

The majority of races of this type take place on the African continent, in particular the longest and most famous of all: the Dakar rally (replaced from 2009 to a lesser extent by the Africa Eco Race), as well as the rally of Côte d'Ivoire since 1969, the Pharaohs rally in Egypt, the Morocco rally, the Tunisia rally, etc. On other continents, the UAE Desert Challenge (Dubai), the Por Las Pampas (Argentina), and, since 2008, La TransOrientale (Russia, Kazakhstan, China), heir to the “Paris Moscow Beijing” at the start of the years are run. 1990.

There are also events derived from the rally-raid, but not including the concept of speed (see Motorized Raid).

The rally-raids developed under the leadership of Thierry Sabine, who organized the Paris-Dakar from 1979 until his death in 1986. The field of competitors was then very varied and many stars of song and cinema came to mix with amateurs and the few professionals hired by official teams.

Currently, the number of professionals has not increased, but the stars have somewhat deserted the discipline which remains a microcosm within the great family of motorsport. Finally, it is always the professionals who fight for victory, even if it is the amateurs who make the events live, since they represent more than 90% of the competitors.

The Dakar Rally (or simply "The Dakar"; formerly known as the "Paris–Dakar Rally") is an annual rally raid organised by the Amaury Sport Organisation. Most events since the inception in 1978 were staged from Paris, France, to Dakar, Senegal, but due to security threats in Mauritania, which led to the cancellation of the 2008 rally, events from 2009 to 2019 were held in South America. Since 2020, the race has been entirely in Saudi Arabia. The rally is open to amateur and professional entries, amateurs typically making up about eighty percent of the participants.

The rally is an off-road endurance event. The terrain that the competitors traverse is much tougher than that used in conventional rallying, and the vehicles used are typically true off-road vehicles and motorcycles, rather than modified on-road vehicles. Most of the competitive special sections are off-road, crossing dunes, mud, camel grass, rocks, and erg among others. The distances of each stage covered vary from short distances up to 800–900 kilometres (500–560 mi) per day.

Vehicles here are vehicles that have raced in the Dakar Rally, or may have a certain spec inspired by a certain Dakar Rally vehicle.

Exemple: Ford F-150 Raptor Race Truck, Peugeot 3008 DKR Maxi, Porsche 959 Raid, Volkswagen Race Touareg 3, etc.