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About the Dakar Rally:
The Dakar Rally is the biggest and toughest motorsports
event in the world. This year the rally starts in Lisbon,
Portugal, and travels through Spain, Morocco, Mauritania, Mali,
Guinea, with the finish in Dakar, Senegal. With its
popularity, the event enjoys worldwide TV and other media
coverage. There are various categories for cars, trucks,
motorcycles, quads, and of course sidecars. Just finishing the
event is considered a great accomplishment. It starts in
early January, and continues for over 2 weeks, typically covering
6000 miles or more.
Official Dakar Rally web site: www.dakar.com
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2006 Route
The 2008 route
is very similar |
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Why are we racing Dakar:
We are attracted to this great event
because of the huge challenge. Our objective is to do what's never been
done before; take a Harley through the tortuous Sahara desert in
Africa, all the way to the finish of the toughest race on earth. Beyond the basic
"competition" aspects, this race is a huge challenge physically,
mentally, mechanically, organizationally, financially, and more. A
successful result in the Dakar Rally would be a crowning achievement in
any racers career.
Though the Dakar Rally is difficult for all competitor, it is particularly
difficult for sidecar teams. On average only about one or two
sidecars compete in this race each year. Over the past 30 years,
only a couple of sidecars have finished, though none in recent
years with the more stringent rules. This extra difficulty is
particularly motivating for us.
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Our Dakar 2006 story:
Read our full Dakar 2006 story on our News page
HERE.
In brief, we competed in Dakar for our first time in January
2006. This was primarily a learning experience for us, as
the odds for first-timers finishing are below 50%, and worse for
sidecar teams. In the race most things went very well as we
were leading in our category, but we had a sprocket problem in
Morocco and were not allowed to continue in the race because we
had missed a one hour time window while making repairs. This
was quite disappointing since the repairs had put the bike in
perfect condition, and we were 100% ready to continue. But
we took our lumps, and set our sights on returning. We
gained a huge amount of knowledge from our first Dakar experience,
and feel confident we'll be ready to go the full distance next
time.
The huge cost of racing Dakar has forced us to skip Dakar 2007 and
2008,
and aim to be there extremely well prepared in January 2009.
We continue to make improvements to the bike, and continue our
testing and training.
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