Dakar 2013 - Official Event Coverage - thank you ALL TeamF5, lurkers and posters!

Best new bumper sticker:

"A big dune ate me"

I really hope Barreda Bort will keep a cool head today.
As someone mentioned earlier, no one has seen Coma or Despres pushing like that all the time.


If Despres wins this race without winning a special, they should promote him from le Patron to the Genaral.

He still had one of the funnier comments on a TV interview - Desert Challenge 2011.

Day 4 - Sam's engine had blown on day 3 so day 4 he started at the back with little nav to do - he won the stage by 18 mins, beat Coma (who led out) by 28 mins and Fretigne stated on TV - " Sam Sunderland - he came past me like he was riding Motorcross"

Mind you little did he know that the week before he was

Sorry guys - just a little slow around here now.

I think that is unlikely he won't push - he is leading off and no way will he want to be caught by Pain or Casteau and lose more time to them.

Equally he may be willing to let them catch him and limit the damage and let them lead off tomorrow - but to slow them down in this manner will open it up for others to catch up - particularly Cyril :eek1

I don't believe he rides like this plus it may then give them 7 1/2 and 9 1/2 mins on him if they all came in together - is he going to let that happen?

Not sure if this should be in here, but here goes...

I am getting pretty pissed off with the ASO.

In this world of technology, we are forced into guessing what is happening for the whole stage. The closest we ever get is waypoint and checkpoint updates and sometimes side of the road sightings or snatches from teams, all seldom in real time. Then, a highly condensed version through various TV channels later in the day to get the visuals of what we guessed to have happened earlier.

I get that Rallying by its very nature, gives enormous advantage to a competitor who can get even the slightest info outside of what is in his roll book that his competitors don’t. I guess that info is the EPO of the rallying world. It seems there is almost a paranoiac effort to keep this out that is stilting the virtual spectators experience.

The technology is there for the members of the virtual stadium to not only follow closely, a dot/s of their choice on a map, but also the possibility for real time pictures from the bike/car/truck much like any other motor sport.

I have followed a team of adventure racers who pack everything they race with on their backs for 5 days and still, even in the wilds of the Australian outback or a snowstorm late at night on the top of a Scottish mountain, I could cheer them on from my home in Africa. Also, I could suffer the anguish of a slow moving or stopped dot, or worse, when the dot goes off course or is pulled from the course! They even have optional checkpoints where they can take pictures, pick up and leave messages for their fans to access as and when.

There has to be a solution somewhere between trying to keep people from accessing outside assistance and allowing us to join in the greatest motoring show on earth.

If some solution could be found, apart from making it even more addictive than it is to people who get “it”. It enables the deeper human stories to be told to a far wider audience. The spinoff is a win/win. More people watch, more people will sponsor, more people will want to compete and lastly a huge source of potential income to the competitors will be generated reducing the one major bugbear in participating in the Dakar – money.

So endeth my bleat, carry on.

It does exist - Irritrack and it is used in just about every other high profile international Rally, except maybe the Oz Safari

Yes people know where you are on track, but not sure how that can be conveyed to the rider and enable them to adjust what they is doing with respect to it - so yes spend a few $ of the millions and let's have it as a greater 'spectator" sport.

Even Irritack can be annoying as you only get position updates every 2 mins, but the F5 predictions based on this are manic but beyond that we would be only real time tracking

Now theres an idea - Jack Bauer had it

kamanya, in the 90's we didnt even have that. the race was basically reported partially in a 2 days delay.
Today it is very accurate and quite fun with all the technology and coverage. i mean knowing that robby gordon is on the back after less then 30 mins is a giant leap, knowing he is in k29 of the stage is flying to the moon and back, knowing he blew a radiator... man we reached URANOS...
Now in my humble judgement it is a great coverage if you know french of spanish and can view the online tv live coverage from TV4 and the local TV stations/radio. listening to radio maray or even following them on twitter puts all the information quite promptly at your fingertips.
Comparing this to the romaniacs coverage Pharaohons rally, or any other rally/enduro event and you start to get the feeling the ASO are actually going overboard to get this to realtime.
It could be better but IMHO it looses the Dakar mist and puts us in the level of F1 race, which is the reason i tend to steer clear of these events.
As for the dot following, it will be easy to start giving competitors the location they need to go to get back on track and make it all cheat-able dont you think?

+1 Andrew....

Well, the server has been upgraded. The site has now 4GB available memory, so lets see how much we can "consume". If this aint enough I will have to rewrite some code, but lets hope that's not needed. Thanks for the donations to make this possible. Another 45 euro went into this upgrade lol ;-)

http://trackingdakar.nl/ with live timing, checkpoints and results

http://monitor.trackingdakar.nl/ with the combined overview of all data (unofficial order/ranking)

Have a lot of fun today and lets see how things will run

Much appreciated Sir!

"I kissed a dune and survived"

Just to clarify - The Nissan is one of Desert Rose's ex vehicles, but Desert Rose themselves weren't actually doing the support this year. The truck was sold to the team providing assistance to Paul Jay, and is being driven by Charles Blois who was a sponsor for Tamsin Jones in 2010 and continues to support Craig Bounds (for those that don't know, Tamsin and Craig are a couple)...

Jx

Ok, Withdrawal Aussie66 out of the race. engine blown.

Off to Karachi in the morning, then Poland on Sunday for a few days then back to Dxb for a clean shirt and on to Singapore for a few days.

Damn.

As stupid it may sound i think that ASO has not seen the possibilities in this(yet). And they are not aware of the crowd/fanswho only can follow this on the internet. And we all know that the best place to follow this is the net. I agree and tend to think that ASO is a bit old In there thoughts of people only get there 5min update from tv in the evening. They are not exploiting the real opportunities in having a well defined and functional site. With a trustworthy live tracker and what not.

I hear you, though I don't agree.

I get, some prefer what you have said and like the "mists".

Me, I'm sadly a bit ADD and want instant gratification, in dolby surround sound and IMAX, from my work desk dammit!

woohoo caught up!!! lost in the dunes there for a while and was stationary for at least half an hour due to an unknown technical problem, but got here.... just need to go back and watch the vid's i bookmarked...

Iritrack was online in Moroccos, 6 minute interval IIRC, also in the current Africa Eco Race.
We had a similar system (for public viewing) in Serres, and that was "broadcast" with a 15 minute delay, to avoid anyone whipping out their phone and calling their mate if lost on the course... I'm pretty sure you can adjust the position relay delay by even more if one so wishes

i was thinking that the other day... compared to the buglies and the girly cars, and the pickups, it just looks like the wrong car to be racing over dunes in..... looks great when it's flying on the fast open stuff but in the tight tracks and steep dunes sometimes it looks like someone has accidentally taken their family wagon somewhere they shouldn't....

i'd settle for their online trackers working properly at the moment....