The machinery of the Dakar Rally is back in motion these days in Barcelona, where this Thursday the verifications of the vehicles that will embark from the port of Barcelona towards the sixth edition of the test in Saudi Arabia began. The menu was presented in the afternoon and introduces interesting new features in the eternal pursuit to give a twist to the toughest race on the planet. Almost 8,000 kilometers of racing, 5,000 of them against the clock, await the more than 800 competitors registered in 2025. The star invention of this course is the splitting of almost half of the route for motorcycles and cars, which will use differentiated routes on terrain Arabic.
“My philosophy is that sport comes first, and although it may represent a logistical challenge, this introduces more navigation difficulties for the cars, which will not be able to count on the help of the motorcycle tracks,” says David Castera, director of the Dakar, in conversation with Morning Express and other Spanish media. The separation of routes increases the safety of participants, since the departure time will be earlier for everyone and mass arrivals at night to the bivouacs will be avoided. “We must take care of the first, but also the last,” he adds.
The 47th edition of the Dakar Rally will begin in Bisha, in the southwest of the country, on January 3 and will feature a prologue and 12 stages ending in Shubaytah on the 17th, in the heart of the always demanding Rub al Khali desert, one of the largest and most inhospitable bodies of sand in the entire world. “This edition maintains the standard of last year, and will once again be an endurance race, far from a sprint“Going at full speed every day would be crazy, and it’s about going fast without going over the line,” summarizes Castera. A fifth of the route will consist of sailing through the dunes, and the first big challenge will come on the second and third day, during a Chrono 48h without assistance of any kind of almost 1,000 kilometers.
This afternoon, starting at 7:00 p.m. at the Moll de Marina, several of the main Spanish competitors will review the vicissitudes of the course before the Barcelona public, in an event with free access. A hundred Spaniards have signed up for the test, which will have Carlos Sainz (Ford), Nani Roma (Ford) and Cristina Gutiérrez (Dacia) among the favorites in cars, and Tosha Schareina (Honda) as the main reference on two wheels. It remains to be seen how KTM’s economic crisis, which reduces its roster to three riders, affects competitiveness on motorcycles, while on four wheels Toyota has the most consolidated vehicle among the leading projects, although its riders are nowhere near as experienced as the Al-Attiyah, Loeb and company.
The director of the Dakar, who has been dreaming for years of expanding his horizons in the Arabian Peninsula, with Oman and Jordan as his main objectives, recognizes that the event is anchored to Saudi Arabia until 2029. By then the current contract will expire, without exclusivity, but not too much interest in broadening vision on the part of the country that pays the bills for the reference rally-raid.
