The Dakar Rally has attracted the attentionAfrican adventure of motorcyclists from around the world for 29 years. Many would like to try their hand at this dangerous game, and some actually gather the courage, but only a select few make it to the finish. It is a test of the extreme limits of endurance of man and machine.

The 9000 kilometer long course which leads from the south of Europe through the huge and treacherous Sahara all the way to Dakar, Senegal, takes no prisoners. This year some 245 riders started from Lisbon (Portugal), with 133 making it to the finish line. This is a surprisingly large number for this rally; usually a little over a third of the riders finish. The overall winner for the second time in his career was Frenchman Cyril Despres on a factory KTM 690 Rally.
Unfortunately, this year’s race was also not without tragedy. After the death of a South African rider, a French rider had a heart attack and died on stage 14, just before Dakar. But this is a part of this cruel race, of which all who set out on this uncertain adventure are aware.

The race was anything but comfortable for the winning rider. Spaniard Marc Coma, who started with start number one on his factory KTM, led practically from the beginning all the way to ill-fated stage 13, when he rammed into a tree head-on and dropped out of the race. Cyril Despres admitted on several occasions that Marc Coma was too fast for him and that the fight for the victory was out of reach, as the gap between him and the leader was nearly an hour after just a few stages. The Frenchman had fallen behind mainly due to technical problems, when his KTM got stuck in first gear on the first African stage.

Winning this rally is never gifted, but always ground out and earned, and the top spot on the podium goes to the rider who finds the best compromise between speed and caution.

In this regard, here are some facts for statistics lovers. This year’s winner had only two stage victories, with two second places, three thirds, and one fifth, eleventh, twenty-first (on the stage when his transmission failed), twenty-sixth (on stage two) and even fifty-sixth on the last stage, which is merely a formality, a ride around Rose Lake in Dakar. All of this shows that the rally is a marathon, and not a madcap dash through the desert as it might appear on television.

We also witnessed the increasing popularity of 450 cc bikes, where Yamaha (the winners in the class) lead the field, while Honda has an increasingly big appetite for desert races, and put their money this year on Thierry Bethys, the hero of Le Touquet – the wild race over the beaches and dunes of northern France. Both Yamaha and Honda used Akrapovic exhaust systems for the Dakar Rally, since the riders can really use the additional engine power in the desert.

In an endurance rally, exhaust system modifications are very important, since the engines cannot be heavily modified due to the need for maximum durability. A high-quality exhaust system increases power and torque without any engine modification.

29th Dakar Rally overall results

Pos.	N°	Name	Make	Time	Variation	Penalty
1	002	DESPRES (FRA)	KTM	51:36:53	00:00:00
2	008	CASTEU (FRA)	KTM	52:11:12	00:34:19
3	009	BLAIS (USA)	KTM	52:28:59	00:52:06
4	006	ULLEVALSETER (NOR)	KTM	53:14:50	01:37:57
5	010	RODRIGUES (POR)	YAMAHA	54:07:34	02:30:41
6	023	VINTERS (LAT)	KTM	54:21:14	02:44:21	03:00
7	020	MARCHINI (FRA)	YAMAHA	54:37:20	03:00:27
8	085	BETHYS (FRA)	HONDA	55:03:26	03:26:33	03:00
9	103	KATRINAK (SLQ)	KTM	55:17:03	03:40:10	10:00
10	016	CZACHOR (POL)	KTM	56:00:57	04:24:04
11	011	KNUIMAN (HOL)	HONDA	56:14:32	04:37:39	10:00
12	019	PLANET (FRA)	KTM	56:51:11	05:14:18
13	024	STANOVNIK (SLO)	KTM	58:11:41	06:34:48
14	116	VINTERS (LAT)	KTM	58:44:46	07:07:53	10:00
15	133	MACEK (CZE)	YAMAHA	59:16:38	07:39:45
16	031	PAIN (FRA)	YAMAHA	59:18:50	07:41:57	30:00
17	015	ALGAY (FRA)	YAMAHA	59:55:25	08:18:32	09:00
18	146	CLASSEN (AFS)	KTM	60:14:50	08:37:57	33:00
19	043	BERGLUND (SUE)	KTM	60:34:26	08:57:33
20	102	KATAI (HUN)	KTM	60:37:25