2013 Dakar Cliff Notes thread

[Flood]

Ladies, Gentlemen,

this is ADVrider's traditional Dakar Cliff Notes thread. Its purpose is to offer the day's most important information and media, interviews and tweets that show up all over ADV and the rest of the net.

The Official Event Coverage thread - aka the firehose - will be moving at a brisk pace and will be hard to follow for all but the most desperate fans.

This thread will be locked, so that only moderators can post here. The mods will try to move the most informative posts here and we hope that the result is something everyone can follow.

Welcome, and a great Dakar to all - Racers, teams, lurkers and posters!