Dakar Rally is an annual cross-country endurance motor race. The race takes place over a period of days, crosses rugged terrain over long distances, and includes hundreds of drivers and several types of vehicles. The Dakar Rally began in 1978. It was originally known as the Paris-Dakar Rally, because the race ran from Paris, France, to Dakar, Senegal. The race moved to South America in 2009 and to Saudi Arabia in 2020.
The Dakar Rally includes five different vehicle categories: (1) cars; (2) motorcycles; (3) quads (all-terrain vehicles, or ATV’s); (4) trucks ; and (5) utility task vehicles (UTV’s). A UTV is a two-seater style of ATV also known as a side-by-side, or SxS. The race route changes annually and typically runs about 5,000 miles (8,000 kilometers) through canyons, deserts, and mountain passes. The length and extreme remoteness of the race route test navigational skills and push drivers to the limits of endurance.
The first Dakar Rally began on Dec. 26, 1978, with 182 motorcycles and cars. The vehicles left the Place du Trocadéro in Paris on a 6,000-mile (10,000-kilometer) journey. They followed a route from Paris to Marseille, where boats carried them across the Mediterranean Sea to Algeria. From there, the route continued through the dunes and dust of Niger, Mali, Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso), and finally, Senegal. The racers covered an average of more than 500 miles (800 kilometers) per day. The winners crossed the finish line in Dakar on Jan. 14, 1979. Just 74 vehicles completed the race.
The Dakar Rally continued annually and gained popularity, reaching a peak of 688 racers in 2005. In 2008, security threats in Mauritania (Mali’s neighbor to the west) shut down the race, and it was moved to the deserts and scrubland of South America. After 11 races through Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, and Peru, the Dakar Rally moved to the vast deserts of Saudi Arabia in 2020.
