A history of the Dakar Rally

Strap yourselves in and check the GPS, as we take a white-knuckle ride through the colourful history of the world’s most demanding endurance rally

What is the Dakar Rally?

The Dakar Rally is an endurance rally race for adventure bikes, quad bikes, 4x4s, cars and trucks that has taken place annually (with one exception) since its very first outing in the winter of 1978-79.

Over its 13 days, competitors travel between 3,800 and 9,300 miles through some of our planet's most inhospitable environments: no wonder, then, that ‘the Dakar’ is renowned as one of the most punishing sporting events in the world.

That first 78-79 race, and its successors until 1991, took competitors from Paris to Dakar, the capital of Senegal in West Africa. Subsequent races have taken place across the deserts of Argentina, Chile, Paraguay, Peru, Bolivia and, latterly, Saudi Arabia, but the Dakar's essential DNA – deserts, mountains, endurance, heat, a punishing schedule, and an eye-catching array of off-road vehicles – remains the same. Contestants must traverse immense distances, through tough, extreme conditions, in full race gear under a scorching sun.

When it comes to the difficulties that have given the Dakar its fearsome reputation, those sheer distances to cover are obviously a big factor. You can add to that, though, the terrain: the Dakar’s sand dunes, mud, gravel, rocks, rivers and ravines are far more demanding than the challenges posed by more conventional rally races, and the vehicles that compete need to be genuine off-roaders, rather than simply souped-up on-road machines.

Who can enter?

One of the most fascinating things about the rally is the wide range of vehicles that are allowed to line up at the start.

The five primary classes are UTVs (utility task vehicles, also known as side-by-side vehicles or SSVs), quad bikes, cars (which itself contains three classes, and includes dune buggies and small SUVs), motorcycles – and trucks, who have their own specific course.

As if finishing the Dakar weren’t demanding enough in itself, a small subsection of the Bikes division, the ‘Malle Moto’ category, is for riders who want to step up the challenge still further by competing alone. This means no support crew, so they must undertake all servicing and repair work to their bikes themselves – even after an exhausting day of ploughing through sand dunes in the blistering heat.

Elsewhere, 2021 saw the introduction of a new ‘Dakar Classic’ class, specifically for cars and trucks manufactured before 2000 (or new vehicles built to their original pre-2000 specification). Again, these vehicles have been assigned their own route, more suitable for their engineering.

Competitors in this class at the 2021 race included the Toyota Land Cruiser, Mercedes G-Class, Range Rover, Porsche 911 SC – and a Baja Bug, a VW Beetle modified for off-road driving. These vehicles will need to come armed with some premium classic motor insurance before they take to the Dakar’s rugged and unforgiving routes.

How does it work?

Each day the contestants assemble at the start line for that day's stage, typically some 500-550 miles. Each stage finishes at a 'bivouac' – a large base camp where the teams can repair their machines and get in some much-needed rest and recuperation before the race resumes the next day. There’s also a welcome rest day in the middle of the rally.

As to how contestants are scored, this is done via a mixture of timings for each stage, plus certain individual checkpoints that each competitor must pass through, or face a heavy points fine.

And what about budget? It's estimated that the minimum budget required for a private competitor to complete the Dakar is somewhere around £50,000. That needs to cover all the preparations you’ll need to make, plus entry fees, travel, spares, and living expenses.

Beginnings: lost in the desert

For a world-famous rally, the Dakar has an interestingly off-kilter origin story. Back in 1976, French rally driver Thierry Sabine was taking part in a race from Abidjan, Ivory Coast to Nice, in the south of France, when he found himself lost in the Ténéré desert, a particularly remote section of the southern Sahara.

Sabine's first priority was to get himself back on course – but, while doing so, he noticed that the desert area where he'd ended up would make a fantastic long-distance rally course. Happily, Sabine made his way out of the Ténéré and back to civilisation – and once there, he started exploring the idea of a rally race through the region.

Fast forward to Boxing Day 1978, and 182 contestants were raring to go at the start of Sabine’s all-new Paris-Dakar Rally. Beginning at the Place du Trocadéro, a stone's throw from the Eiffel Tower, the original route took the competitors down through France, stopping to cross the Mediterranean into Algeria, then through the West African countries of Niger, Mali, Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso) and on into Senegal – and traversing a fair chunk of the forbidding Sahara along the way.

Seventy-four of the starters completed the course on 14^th January 1979. Frenchman Cyril Neveu was to cross the finishing line, on a Yamaha motorbike; he would go on to win the motorbike division a further four times during the 1980s.

Dakar's growth in popularity was steady right from the start: the following year, 1980, the number of entrants jumped to 216, and again to 291 in 1981. A new chapter had been written in the history of rally racing.

The 1980s: big names, bigger rivalries

Over the next few years, the Paris-Dakar Rally (as it became known) began to make waves, attracting some top-drawer professional racers including France's Alain Ambrosino, Jacky Ickx of Belgium, and Finland’s World Rally champion Ari Vatanen. There was a swashbuckling spirit to those early years, with racers pitting themselves against the inhospitable desert, armed with just a few limited resources.

A typical race would include some 80% amateurs, and 20% professional racing drivers and riders. One Thierry de Montcorgé competed in the relative luxury of a Rolls-Royce saloon (accompanied, we hope, by some decent classic auto insurance); Formula 1 driver Ickx drove a Citroën CX, with legendary screen actor Claude Brasseur by his side.

Perhaps best summing up this adventurous, hell-for-leather spirit were the Marreau brothers from the Paris suburbs, who competed in 1980 and 1981 in a Renault 4 that they'd refitted to provide 4x4 abilities – and then triumphed in 1982, in a similarly modified Renault 20.

You’ll have noticed a distinctly French flavour to the names so far. And indeed, in those early years, the leader boards were markedly Francophone – a look at the final table for 1982, for example, shows that the top five pairings in the Car category were Frenchmen (or, in one case, the Ickx/Brasseur coupling, Franco-Belgian), as were all of the top five in the Bikes category and four out of five in the Trucks section.

The late 1980s were something of a high water mark for the rally. For one thing, the race was arguably at its most demanding – in 1986, only a fifth of Dakar’s contestants made it to the end.

In 1987, Peugeot decided to get involved, winning the Cars category at the first time of asking with Vatanen driving a Peugeot 205 T16. That year also saw some fierce rivalry between the two leading Frenchmen in the Bikes category, Neveu and Hubert Auriol. Already a two-time Bikes winner by 1987, Auriol would also go on, impressively, to win in the Cars category in 1992. Back in 1987, though, a third Bikes crown would elude him: he had the bad luck to break both ankles in a fall, allowing Neveu to go on and claim his fifth and final victory.

The following year, 1988, saw a peak in entry numbers, with 603 starters across the five categories. Defending his title in a Peugeot 405, Vatanen’s hopes were punctured when his car was stolen from a service area. A ransom note for 25 million French francs was attached – the car was eventually found, but too late for Vatanen's hopes of winning. We just hope that his classic car insurance covered the loss to his wallet, if not to his pride…

The 1990s and on: new horizons

From 1992 onwards, the course began to extend beyond its traditional Paris-Dakar boundaries. That year, in order to attract more contestants, the rally extended all the way down the continent to Cape Town in South Africa. Three years later, it was the start that underwent a change: the 1995 race began some way further south than Paris, in Granada, southern Spain.

After a repeat performance in Granada in 1996, the Dakar had one year as an exclusively African event: the 1997 race took contestants from Dakar to Agadez in Niger and back again. Come the millennium, meanwhile, the organisers decided something special was required – and designed a course that finished at the Pyramids of Giza.

2001 was the final time that the rally used the familiar Paris-Dakar route: that year was also noteworthy for its Cars winner, Mitsubishi's Jutta Kleinschmidt, the first woman to win the rally. From 2002 to 2004, Dakar moved its start point around France (Arras, Marseille, the Auvergne), decamping to Barcelona in 2005 and Lisbon in 2007 and 2008, but always finishing in its traditional end point. The 2008 race, however, was cancelled after security fears, with fears of terrorist attacks in the country of Mauritania, through which the race passed.

From 2009 to 2019, in response to the increased terrorist threat landscape in Europe and North Africa, the Dakar Rally upped sticks and took place across the Atlantic, in Chile, Bolivia and Argentina. 2017 saw the race’s highest proportion of finishers, with 69% of competitors making it over the line.

Finally, since 2020, the rally has been based in the immense deserts of Saudi Arabia's Empty Quarter.

The ultimate test

Finishing the Dakar means pushing yourself – and your vehicle – to your limits. The unforgiving terrain means that each vehicle’s suspension, chassis, and powertrain are put through the most rigorous examination. These rugged desert conditions often lead to mechanical failure, and – unless they have a dedicated race team behind them – competitors will often find themselves fixing their battle-weary machine at the end of an exhausting day's racing. No wonder, then, that many contestants go home as DNFs (did not finish).

And, as you'd expect with such a gruelling, risk-laden event, there have been plenty of major accidents and misadventures over the years. The demand for classic car insurance must be high!

One time the Dakar broke through into the global news schedule was back in 1982, when Mark Thatcher – young businessman, rally enthusiast, and son of the then British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher – was among the contestants. Thatcher was already quite the motor racing enthusiast, having competed twice in the French sports car endurance race at Le Mans.

Passing through the Sahara on 9^th January in their white Peugeot 504, Thatcher, his co-driver Anne-Charlotte Verney and their mechanic disappeared for six days, triggering a major search-and-rescue operation. Forced to stop to make repairs to their steering, the trio had become separated from the convoy of vehicles they'd been travelling with. After five days of searching, an Algerian military plane spotted the car some 30 miles off course. Thatcher, Verney, and the mechanic were all unharmed.

Dakar legends

The 1990s saw the rise of a particular Dakar legend: Frenchman Stéphane Peterhansel, the rally’s most successful competitor of all time. After winning the Bikes class six times in the 1990s, Peterhansel switched to cars, where he has taken a further eight championships to date.

In the Cars class, Mitsubishi dominate the rankings, with 12 Dakar Rally wins to date – all achieved in its remarkable Pajero Evolution off-roader. Peugeot come in second with seven wins, while Mini are bronze medallists with six victories so far.

When it comes to nationalities, however, France bestrides the competition it was so instrumental in creating: the Cars contest has been won by a French driving team a hugely impressive 23 times, dwarfing second-placed Finland with its five wins.

Hats off, too, to Yoshimasa Sugawara, who lined up at the start for an extraordinary 36 consecutive Dakar rallies from 1983 to 2019, competing in the Bike, Car and Truck categories and entering his last Dakar at the venerable age of 77.

Proof positive that, once the Dakar buzz gets you, it’s hard to stay away…

You may not be putting your classic car through anything quite as gruelling as the Dakar Rally – but wherever the road ahead takes you, you can trust Lancaster Insurance to protect your cherished vehicle.

Get in touch for a quote today.

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