7 Days of Dakar: Day 3

Photo Credit: enduro21.com

As someone for whom stage rallying is my primary interest, the Dakar has always been on my radar. It’s always served as a tasty appetizer to the upcoming rally season and a reminder that even in the cold winter months, mortorsport is still happening. However, I’ll be the first to raise my hand and admit that for a long time, there was a lot about the Dakar Rally that I didn’t really understand. One of those aspects is how the navigation worked. I had a vague idea about GPS, roadbooks, and compass headings having importance, but didn’t really understand how a driver (or rider) used these things in conjunction to make it safely to the end of a stage. If you’re in the same camp and would like to know a bit more about how exactly navigation in the Dakar Rally works, I thought you’d might enjoy this video. One misconception that I held until seeing this clip was that the GPS was always active. I didn’t realize that it only “lit up” at certain points when the competitor was close to the next way-point. It’s amazing how little information the competitors (especially those on the bikes) have to go on when they’re out there on a Dakar stage. It makes what they do all the more impressive! Thanks to Brake Magazine for publishing this really informative video!

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