The Dakar Rally or simply "The Dakar", formerly known as the "Paris–Dakar Rally", is an annual rally raid organised by the Amaury Sport Organisation. Most events since the inception in 1978 were staged from Paris, France, to Dakar, Senegal. Security threats in Mauritania led to the cancellation of the 2008 rally, and events from 2009 to 2019 were held in South America. Since 2020, the rally has been held in Saudi Arabia. The event is open to amateur and professional entries, professionals typically making up about eighty percent of the participants.
Rallying is a wide-ranging form of motorsport with various competitive motoring elements such as speed tests, navigation tests, or the ability to reach waypoints or a destination at a prescribed time or average speed. Rallies may be short in the form of trials at a single venue, or several thousand miles long in an extreme endurance rally.
Motorsport(s) or motor sport(s) are sporting events, competitions and related activities that primarily involve the use of automobiles, motorcycles, motorboats and powered aircraft. For each of these vehicle types, the more specific terms automobile sport, motorcycle sport, power boating and air sports may be used commonly, or officially by organisers and governing bodies.
Carlos Sainz Cenamor is a Spanish rally driver. He won the World Rally Championship drivers' title with Toyota in 1990 and 1992, and finished runner-up four times. Constructors' world champions to have benefited from Sainz are Subaru (1995), Toyota (1999) and Citroën. In the 2018 season he was one of the official drivers of the Team Peugeot Total. He received the Princess of Asturias Sports Award in 2020. Sainz founded the Acciona | Sainz XE Team to join Extreme E and competed in the first two seasons alongside Laia Sanz.
Endurance racing is a form of motorsport racing which is meant to test the durability of equipment and endurance of participants. Teams of multiple drivers attempt to cover a large distance in a single event, with participants given a break with the ability to change during the race. Endurance races can be run either to cover a set distance in laps as quickly as possible, or to cover as much distance as possible over a preset amount of time.
Jean-Louis Schlesser is a French racing driver who has competed in both circuit racing and cross-country rallying. He is the nephew of Jo Schlesser, a former Formula One driver. Jean-Louis entered two Formula One races five years apart. At the 1988 Italian Grand Prix, he and race leader Ayrton Senna crashed out after colliding; the race was ultimately the only one of the 1988 Formula One season which was not won by a McLaren.
Eliseo Salazar Valenzuela is a Chilean former racing driver. As of 2024, he is the only Chilean to have participated in a Formula One World Championship. He made his Formula One debut on 15 March 1981, and ultimately contested 37 races scoring a total of three championship points. After Formula One, Salazar has participated in numerous motorsport disciplines, including the Chilean national rally championship, Formula 3000, IndyCar, and the World Sportscar Championship.
Jutta Kleinschmidt is a German competitor of offroad automotive racing events. She is known for her numerous showings in the Paris Dakar Rally, and notably for having won the event in 2001, becoming the first woman driver to win the race and the only German to win the car category. In 2013, Kleinschmidt was named an FIM Legend for her motorcycling achievements.
Lapo Edovard Elkann is an Italian businessman, philanthropist, and socialite. He is the chairman, founder, and majority shareholder (53.37%) of the Italia Independent Group. He is also the president and founder of Garage Italia Customs and Independent Ideas, as well as a member of the board of directors of Ferrari N.V. and responsible for the promotion of the Fiat Group brand. He is the great-grandson of Fiat S.p.A. founder Giovanni Agnelli, the grandson of Gianni Agnelli, who is the former controlling CEO and controlling shareholder of Fiat Automobiles, and the brother of John Elkann.
Hubert Auriol was a French professional off-road motorcyclist and auto racer competing in rally raid events. After retiring as a competitor, he served as the director of The Paris-Dakar rally. Auriol is notable for being the first competitor to win the Dakar rally on motorcycles and in automobiles. In 2012, Auriol was named an FIM Legend for his motorcycling achievements.
Honda Racing Corporation (HRC), also known as Honda Racing, is a motorsport subsidiary of the Honda Motor Company formed in 1982. From its founding, the company was initially solely responsible for Honda's motorcycle racing activities, before the brand's automobile racing activities were integrated into HRC's scope of work on 1 April 2022. The company combines participation in motorcycle races throughout the world with the development of racing machines. Its racing activities are an important source for the creation of technologies used in the development of Honda motorcycles. HRC activities include sales of production racing motorcycles, support for satellite teams, and rider education programs.
Rally raid is a type of off-road motorsport event for automobiles and motorcycles. Along with shorter baja rallies, rally raid constitutes cross-country rallying. Both the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) and Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme (FIM) co-organise a common World Rally-Raid Championship featuring the same events for both types of vehicle.
Mark Miller is an American professional off-road racer, competing in both cars and on motorcycles.
The 2009 Dakar Rally was the 31st running of the Dakar Rally. In addition to motorcycle, automobile, and truck categories, a separate quad class was added for the first time. The race began on 3 January 2009, and took place across Argentina and Chile. The rally was for the first time to take place outside of Europe and Africa as the location was changed by organizers due to concerns about possible terrorist attacks that resulted in the moving of the 2008 edition from the traditional route to Senegal to Hungary and Romania in the spring.
The 2010 Dakar Rally was the 32nd running of the event. It was held in South America for the second successive time, and ran from 1 to 16 January. The Amaury Sport Organisation and the governments of Argentina and Chile agreed to a return to South America for the event in February 2009.
Laia Sanz Pla-Giribert, also known as Laia Sanz, is a Spanish sportswoman. She is a fourteen-time Women's Trial World Champion and ten-time Women's Trial European Champion in outdoor motorcycle trials.
The Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge is an international rally raid race held in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi of the United Arab Emirates since 1991. The race is points scoring for the World Rally-Raid Championship and is organized by the Automobile & Touring Club of the United Arab Emirates (ATCUAE), headed by the event founder Mohammed bin Sulayem.
Africa Eco Race is an annual rally raid, organised in France and run in North and West Africa, launched after the cancellation of 2008 Dakar Rally, and the subsequent moving of the rally to South America.
The 2020 Dakar Rally was the 42nd edition of the event and the first edition held in Saudi Arabia. The event started in Jeddah on 5 January and finished in Al-Qiddiya on 17 January after 12 stages of the competition.
The 2021 Dakar Rally was a rally raid event held in Saudi Arabia and the 43rd edition of the Dakar Rally. The event was held for 14 days, starting from 3 January and ended 15 January 2021. It was the second time Saudi Arabia had hosted the event, with support from the Saudi Automobile and Motorcycle Federation. The race started and ended in Jeddah, allowing the competitors to venture through the desert and alongside the Red Sea. The route consists of one prologue stage and 12 normal stages, with one rest day in Ha'il on 9 January. The rally was originally intended to run through 2–3 additional countries, with Egypt and Jordan being rumoured likely candidates. However, due to travel and border restrictions implemented in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the route stayed entirely within Saudi Arabian territory.
