Saturday thru Saturday, 2-16 January 2016
The first week of the race: Wayback Machine.
Though in recent years the Dakar Rally has run through Argentina, Chile, & Bolivia, & this year was intended to run also in Peru, the 2016 routes were confined to Argentina & Bolivia. That said, the distances covered were still immense; the Dakar is still the Dakar, even an ocean away from the traditional Paris, France to Dakar, Senegal route. (The 2008 Dakar was cancelled due to threats from jihadist terrorists, & since '09 the Dakar has been held in South America.) The different classes of vehicles traversed slightly different routes, each easily rounding up to six thousand miles in length: cars: 5,955 miles; trucks: 5,832 miles; & bikes & quads: 5,791 miles.
Experience counts for a lot over the course of thirteen days & nearly six thousand miles of deserts, mountains, valleys, salt flats, & rivers. Three of the four categories were won by previous winners; one is reminded of David Mamet's line, "Old age & treachery will always beat youth & exuberance." Stéphane Peterhansel's victory in the Cars class reinforced his title as "Monsieur Dakar;" he's now won the Dakar twelve times, six in bikes & now six in cars. Toby Price dominated the Bikes on the way to his first victory, even more impressive as this was only his second Dakar. Marcos Patronelli bested his brother & fellow Dakar winner Alejandro to claim Quads honors. Gerard de Rooy withstood the might of the "KAMAZ Army" & an early charge from the M.A.N. squad to once again prevail in the Trucks.
Cars: Stéphane Peterhansel/Jean-Paul Cottret, Peugeot
Bikes: Toby Price, K.T.M.
Trucks: Gerard de Rooy/Moises Torrallardona/Darek Rodewald, Iveco
Quads: Marcos Patronelli, Yamaha
Attrition was not as high this year as in past Dakars; in no category did fewer than 50% of the competitors to start the rally end up finishing. Start/Finish (& percentage), by category.
Cars: 111/66 (60%)
Bikes: 136/84 (61%)
Trucks: 55/41 (75%)
Quads: 45/23 (51%)
Total: 347/215 (62%)
Commentary: I delayed this Dakar wrap-up post again & again because I intended to combine it into one big "Rally Monkey" post also addressing the 2016 World Rally Championship (W.R.C.), but I kept falling further & further behind on the W.R.C., which made catching up that much tougher, & so on & so forth until, well, here we are, in September, addressing a race run in January. Even then, I was only prompted finally to jettison the W.R.C. part of this post by Peugeot's unveiling of their car for the 2017 Dakar Rally, the 3008 DKR: Racer-link. Inertia, man, inertia.
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