2013 Dakar Pre-Event Discussion

[Deadly99]

Originally Posted by Myway

186

I guess Kevin gets the honors of being out front of the pack (or close to) on Saturday

[Jimmy the Heater]

One of the best uses of a Smart car ever!

[Myway]

Zonas de ...........................
http://http://www.mototimecba.com.ar...el-dakar-2013/

[oldgringo]

Lima today, my wifi is down, will try and upload more photos later
Some photos here http://r1150rt.smugmug.com/Motorcycl...5125&k=JQZvtZC

[Bluebull2007]

Originally Posted by Deadly99

I recall Ned and a few others saying how challenging the last stage was last year. Finding WP's in the fog, in deep sand and being passed by the Hero's at Mach speeds...

Time will tell, quite an honor albeit an intimidating one to open the race. Bummerthey didn't do it like this last year or Bill woulda been out front for the cameras ( Bill, stoked to hear your heading back next year ).

3 more days before the race starts and the pre thread is almost F5able

I dont want to speak too soon but it looks like summer has hit Lima right on time (traditionallay the morning fog clears up after Christmas), and this last week has been hot and sunny everyday with no morning fog. Last year the sea was colder for longer and so the fog lingered longer too. I think its also why the organisers started 5 days later than usual. Past Pisco will definitely have even better weather thanks to the Paracas peninsula, so Im 95% sure SS2 will be a sunny start.

[nicogc]

got invited to the Dakar Village today!!!!!!!!







the guy in the middle is Tato Heinrich, he´s one of our friends who is racing!!!! check him out this year, he's fast :)

[ZequeArgentina]

Originally Posted by troy safari carpente

In reality SS1 on Day 1 (5th jan) is in effect a "prologue" - a short liason after the ceremonial start outside of Lima - the relatively short 13 km special stage (SS1) and then the balance of the 250 km liason section to Pisco. SS1 will serve the purpose of ranking the field for the start of the rally stages in earnest from SS2 (day two).

As per the reg's SS1 start order is determined by the order of the allocated start numbers... and this is exactly what they are doing (only for the motos/quads - it is in reverse order)... as Zeque points out by doing so for the ceremonial ramp start and SS1 it keeps the "stars" of the moto and auto categories closest together and works well for the purpose of a condensed/tight TV broadcast.

As far as any advantage/disadvantage is concerned... well depending on the type of terrain and course marking/navigation difficulty, this may well play into the hands of the late starters. assuming (from last years final selective stage) that they have laid out a 13 km loop on a mix of sandy/offroad terrain (think desert sprint stage) intended to be spectator friendly (think lined with enthusiastic spectators from start to finish - think Lac Rose, but more people!) then it may be that for Cyril and co it will be a matter of just gassing it up and following the mx track like wheel tracks!

For the reverse order early starters (high numbers) they could be the ones laying the path... for others to follow... but I am envisiging something more like a WRC stage in semi desert, than a full on CAP nav dune epic!

I was sure to get confirmation on this on ADV!!!
It will be interesting to probably see the aliens getting time from SS2.
I guess more "virgin" sand, would get late and mid pack (faster) runner a better starting.

[Stagehand]

#186: KM





And from Manuel:

"Bike is almost ready but im really worried have a few things to solve..."

[klatelm]

getting time to burn some fuel,,,,,,,,,thank you all in ADVanced for posting here

[Stagehand]

[mknauer]

Am I the only one to see that Kurt Caselli is racing Dakar this year? Go kid go!

[Bluebull2007]

From Darryl Curtis's blog (http://www.broadlinkktmrally.co.za/b...ome/index.html)

By the time this is published, Riaan and I will have landed in Buenos Aires enroute to Lima with just a few days between us and the start line of Dakar 2013. It’s been a crazy year – juggling business, training and just the preparation for a project as enormous as Dakar. Not that I’m complaining. After 25 years of racing this is the realizing of my dreams and something that would never have been possible without the help and commitment of Mike Brown and Broadlink.

But this year is something different. After last year’s race, Mike said, “let’s go back with two riders”. The financial commitment is massive, Broadlink more than doubled their sponsorship, we started talking to KTM and soon enough, Riaan and I had secured full blown Factory rides alongside Marc Coma, Cyril Despres, Juan Pedrero and Ruben Faria. Our relationship with KTM Rally boss, Alex Doringer, goes back to 2000 when I raced my first Erzberg and thanks to Alfie Cox, we have built up a great friendship with the team and they welcomed us aboard. Emperors Palace also doubled their commitment from 2012, Grindrod Logistics watched all the drama unfold when my bike almost never made it last year and came onboard right from the start with a generous number, at the same time Leader Tread approached us and wanted in, followed by MTN. All of a sudden the numbers made sense and we started the ball rolling.

Riaan’s practice bike arrived and soon enough we had them branded and started training. First up was the Marrakech Rally, where we rented two well used KTM 450’s that had been converted into rally bikes. I won the rally and Riaan finished sixth, this was his first taste of a proper rally and he was a bit rattled, by the navigation side of things. It was a “lite rally” but still a great training exercise. This was followed by a 2500km stint through Botswana, then we entered the Sun City 400 Off Road National. The next trip was Namibia, Ingo Waldschmidt and his team had prepared a 2000Km round trip all on road book, from Windhoek to the Brandberg mountains, where we concentrated our efforts over three days before heading down the west coast to Swakopmund, where we trained in the dunes for two days. The Komashochland pass took us back to Windhoek. Nothing beats the long miles and hours in the saddle, ride time is everything. Then it was off to Erfoud in Southern Morocco for the Rally of Maroc, which is the second biggest rally in the world next to Dakar. It is also used as the testing ground for all the factory teams, we set our brand new bikes up in the Marzouga dunes and ran them in at the same time. The six day rally was tough to navigate, but we still managed to finish 14th and 15th overall.

You simply can’t beat experience and with the top guys having 12 years of rallies on us, it’s really tough to learn everything in a year and be competitive. We got some in depth explanations of how hard the Pro’s work to hone their navigation skills before the big event. Most of them spend weeks at a time in places like Morocco riding old Dakar routes, which they all have on road book, David Casteu even bought a house there, Helder Rodrigues has been seen riding in the middle of the desert completely alone, rallies really are about navigation. I wish we had existing road books at home to practice on, but we don’t and the effort to make them is huge, costly and time consuming.

After Morocco, the bikes went back to the KTM Factory in Austria, where they were thoroughly checked and fitted with new engines. Our old engines were rebuilt and will be our spare engines, which we will change on the rest day. We then flew to Toulouse in the south of France where we met up with the team again and ran our new engines in, did some final suspension tweaks and the team photo shoot. We got home just three days before the Roof of Africa in Lesotho and had pretty much no preparation time, luckily I’ve done it a few times before … around 20 haha, and soon got into the rhythm finishing in fourth place. Riaan finished ninth, it was a boost for our confidence as it showed that all our training had paid off and our physical condition is where it should be.

During the last few months the Rand weakened against the Euro and so our budget took a bit of a hiding, leaving us R250 000 short. Instead of bothering our already generous sponsors, we advertised our supporter’s shirts on Facebook for 200 bucks to see if anyone would buy them. The response was incredible and within three days we had sold 700 shirts …WOW thanks everyone! We will continue to sell the shirts in January and will kick start a competition on my Facebook athlete page (www.facebook.com/DarrylCurtisSA). The best pics will win prizes - we need to be entertained whilst over there, so we are looking for any kind of funny or dumbass pics, but you have to be wearing a supporters shirt and post the pic on my page.

A big thanks to Werner from WBE Formworks for the generous donation towards our shortfall!

I hope to keep everyone in the loop this year, with what’s going on amd this is the plan. After we have ridden each day, we will make a call to a Belgium number on the sat phone supplied by SAT-COM in Namibia, thanks Dave! The service is called phone to blog and the voice recording will be posted on our website www.broadlinkktmrally.co.za, anyone can listen to them. A press release will be written each day and posted on motopics for the journalists to pick up. This will then also go out to Twitter and Facebook with the help of Lara and the Nomadik Tents crew. So thanks again for the awesome support and a Happy New year to everyone.

DC

[Stagehand]

Glen Grundy

[zenjen]

Originally Posted by mknauer

am i the only one to see that kurt caselli is racing dakar this year? Go kid go!

[too old]

Originally Posted by troy safari carpente

Yep, the final stage was run in reverse last year also (same TV consideration for the ceremonial podium finish)... I guess the whole debate on how hard navigate/how much advantage/disadvantage starting early or late will have, will depend largely on how David and JP have laid out the stage; how much markings are used in relation to waypoints or roadbook/odometer readings and which will be the premier means of following the route for this short SS... also how many spectators out lining the 13 km stage... again, last years final stage (the bits we saw on TV) were reminiscent of the B1K routes in Baja norte... thousands of spectators lining the course.... you'd have to be a right Wilbur not to find your way on some of those parts - just drive down the middle of the sea of spectators!

Ha ha, things are warming up - 6 hours kip and 3 pages on and this is only pre-event, 3 pages on HRC also

So do they segregate the elite 50 on SS1, I recall they do? - even so it will be interesting to see the tactics, if SS2 is considered easy for overtaking then the quick guys won't be too fussed on the prolouge and for the few seconds (half a minute or so) they can chase on SS2 and run up quick times - although there will be plently of them so it will be still very interesting to see what transpires

Troy - you have been very quiet about your Ozzie mates - is this on purpose?

Still to be confirmed if they are fighting for places 51 and above for SS2 - you have Simon staring #51, don't know anything about your namesake at #75 (Troy O'Connor) or Warren Strange at #131, but at #'s 57, 123 and 156 (Ben, Rod and Todd) you have 3 riders who should be in the top 20 at least - com'on - give an opinion on SS2 and what's going to happen with the Ozzie assault