Dakar Rally 2019
January 21, 2019
On Thursday, January 17, weary and filthy racers from all over the world pulled their off-road vehicles into Lima, the capital of Peru, completing the final stage of the Dakar Rally. The racers entered the city and crossed the beach finish line in the Magdalena del Mar district after 10 grueling stages of gritty cross-country racing, covering 3,107 miles (5,000 kilometers) of dirt, rock, and sand. The race began in Lima on January 7, running south into the deserts and mountains of southern Peru and passing through the cities of Pisco, Arequipa, Moquegua, and Tacna before returning north to Lima.
An off-road racer climbs the desert dunes near Ica, Peru, during the Dakar Rally. Credit: © Christian Vinces, Shutterstock
The Dakar Rally, once known as the Paris-Dakar Rally, is an annual cross-country endurance race. The rally includes five different vehicle categories: cars; motorcycles; quads (all-terrain vehicles, or ATV’s); trucks; and utility task vehicles, or UTV’s (a two-seater style of ATV also known as a Side-by-Side, or SxS). The first Dakar Rally began on Dec. 26, 1978, as 182 motorcycles and cars revved their engines on the Place du Trocadéro in Paris, France, preparing for the 6,200-mile (10,000-kilometer) journey to Dakar, the capital of Senegal. Covering more than 500 miles (800 kilometers) per day, the winning racers crossed the Dakar finish line on Jan. 14, 1979 (just 74 vehicles completed the race). The racers 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.
A lone biker follows a remote desert track during the Dakar Rally. Credit: © Dan Istitene, Getty Images
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. The 2019 Dakar Rally began with 462 racers from more than 40 countries. The winning drivers in each category came from Argentina, Australia, Chile, Qatar, and Russia. Accidents, mechanical failures, and other problems accounted for a high attrition rate (percentage of racers unable to finish the rally) of 56 percent in 2019.
To compensate for negative impacts of the race on the environment, Dakar Rally sponsors donate large sums to the Madre de Dios project that works to protect the Amazon rain forest and other natural habitats of South America. Race routes avoid sensitive archaeological or paleontological sites, and strict cleanup and recycling rules ensure the integrity of the stunning natural landscapes that define the spectacle of the rally.
