Dakar 2025

Well it's on again starting on the 4th January on SBS from 5pm ADST for an hour.
There is also an app to download to watch more if needed.
Here is an arm patch I bought years ago. 

Helen and I almost entered the 1995 DAKAR.

We had run the 1993 Australian Safari and were on a roll, after wining the National Division, and looked really hard at it.

We figured we would rebuild our Range Rover DAKAR (an English fibreglass body on a Rover chassis) and it would have cost us around $150,000 to do it and it would take us out of work for 2 months.

We had 2 sons under 4 at the time and sense prevailed and we stopped doing rallies due to the parental responsibilities.

I was driving the Rover this afternoon. It's part of the family and has been rebuilt more time than Grand-Dad's axe but we will never sell it.

Zuffen- here's one that I had for the house hack in Nairobi. Had a Perkins Phaser 4cyl turbo in it and pulled like a school boy on the hills in the area where I lived. Martin my boss was never a fan of the Tdi engines. When someone offered Martin an agreeable amount of money he sold it. Got home one time after 2 months on safari and Martin had sold the Landrover he had for us to use as a house hack. I used to listen to the Dakar on the BBC World service as we were well out of range for a TV service. The Dakar is one tough gig.

Race has started plus Toby Price has  a segment on after the race.

Is it just me but in the last couple of years we get about 40% Dakar Rally and 60% flashbacks and endless mostly boring interviews with current or old entrants plus the BS travel doco that the Saudis bought for their sponsorship. If they gave us 20 minutes of the race at the start we could then go off and get on with our lives.

I don't watch or follow it anymore.

When it stopped going to Dakar I lost interest.