For better and for worse, the Dakar is different from everything & mldr; throughout. Perhaps that is why I like this specialty so much, open to pilots with a spirit of adventure, with character, capacity for suffering and willing to face hundreds of kilometers of unknown terrain at full speed and with a desert full of obstacles that await them in each corner.
I already said it in this same column, but I insist: The rhythm that is printed is brutal, excessive and watching the participants go by, your hairs stand on end. The organization should focus again on not running so much, probably with a more difficult navigation and, especially, in the motorcycle category. An average of more than 100 km / h in a stage of 350 kilometers is to play the lottery.
The problem is that the terrain that Saudi Arabia offers us causes it, since they are tracks with long straights and on which you can roll thoroughly. There are dunes, of course, like areas of stones, but when the difficulties are overcome again the accelerator is pressed to the maximum. This, in addition to mechanical problems, causes a good number of accidents, some of them spectacular and always dangerous.
THE RELIABILITY
When one speaks of reliability, it sounds or is interpreted as an excuse. And it is not like that. Cars and motorcycles are being subjected to brutal stress, especially by the candidates to the first positions. Audi, which has already shown that the project has potential, has a shock absorber problem. Nobody hides it, but it did not surprise them either. It is a new car, very young and with complex technology, which needs running-in to overcome the pressure to which it is subjected. The same happens with BRX, the Prodrive car driven by Nani Roma, another new generation prototype that needs adaptation to improve its reliability in a specialty in which the ‘enemies’ are multiple and unexpected & mldr; like the camels in Mikel Prieto’s photo.
