In 1977, French motorcyclist Thierry Sabine got lost in Libya. Sabine had so much fun nearly dying in the African dunes that he organized an international rally based on desert navigation. The very next year, 170-odd people raced with him from Paris to Dakar in Senegal. Only 74 vehicles crossed the finish line, immediately establishing the Dakar Rally as the ultimate contest between racers and nature. The race still runs annually, taking on a different route every year, and today it’s among the most challenging motorsport events on Earth. It’s also a logistical operation of spectacular scale and complexity.
The history of the Dakar Rally can be abbreviated into three chapters: the African years (‘80s and ‘90s, mostly) from which the name is derived, the South American years (late ‘00s and ‘10s) that cultivated a passionate new fanbase, and today’s Middle Eastern Dakar era. Since 2020, the race has been run throughout Saudi Arabia.
The race format has remained consistent. The Dakar Rally has always been a multi-day, thousand-plus-mile navigation challenge for a diverse mix of vehicles in desert terrain. The main sponsors are mostly endemic: Aramco (the Saudi oil company), BF Goodrich, Land Rover, a cool Polish outerwear company called Diverse, and new for this year is Tudor Watch which plays the role of official timekeeper. The Swiss watch outfit brought me out to the race to write this story. While its sister company Rolex is of course huge in motorsports, Tudor is leaning into the adventure-racing angle of the Dakar. “At the core of Tudor’s brand DNA is being daring, and it doesn’t get more daring than Dakar. This made it a natural fit for Tudor to be involved in,” a company spokesperson told me.
Why Is a Race Called "Dakar" Not in Dakar?
In the Dakar Rally’s establishing years, the race ended in the capital city of Senegal on Africa’s west coast. The name’s been kept as the event has moved continents, twice, because it’s now considered “a brand” by the people who run it. It’s the same reason Porsche has an electric car called “Turbo.” … people in charge feel that the word has meaning beyond the literal.
The Dakar has remained within one country for five years now, but no two events are the same. Thanks to the sprawling nature of the race route, no two stages are identical either. Racers don’t know where they’ll be going until five minutes before the light turns green, so each of the Dakar’s 580 competitors (this year’s field size) can have wildly different experiences. This is why managing this race is such an incredible feat of planning and preparation, and competing in it is elite-tier athletics.
We’re not going to focus on any particular pilots in this story, though I’m hoping my photos will give you a good sense of what the race looks like at ground level. To contextualize what the Dakar feels like for drivers, riders, and navigators, I offer this haiku:
Follow a road book,
Find dust, wind, sand, and pain.
The prize: to survive.
Before you even think about getting to the starting line, the logistics of getting your racing vehicle, equipment, and support staff out to the middle of nowhere is no small feat. Driving immense distances over rugged terrain obviously makes for a tough race. The isolation of competitors, from each other, from the world, and from their support teams adds to the intensity.
The Dakar’s sharpest barb is the mental challenge presented by its uniquely brutal navigation element on top of everything else associated with off-road endurance racing. The race is in a special racing genre called Rally Raid, in which competitors have to figure out where they’re going based on directions they’re only allowed to read one step at a time.
Now imagine doing all that, nonstop, for two weeks—and you might understand why so few racers finish the rally—and why even the world’s best drivers are sometimes eliminated early on.
Dakar Rally Vehicles
Dakar race rigs break down into four categories: Bikes, cars, trucks, and classics. From there, there are several classifications of each. In 2025, 335 racing vehicles were approved to start and 175 finished the 4,864-mile course (4,631 for bikes). Four-hundred to 500 support vehicles were estimated to be employed to help the race move around Saudi Arabia, plus a fleet of about 20 helicopters and seven airplanes.
As a casual fan, the most important distinctions to understand are that the cars category covers a range of classes including buggies, SxS UTVs, and what we’d normally consider pickup trucks and SUVs. Racing trucks, in Dakar parlance, are not pickups but more like commercial trucks—except instead of Amazon packages their cargo boxes usually contain a few tools, tires, and a complex pneumatic system for air brakes.
Classics are in their own silo—they’re either vehicles that raced in a bygone Dakar or faithful recreations. But either way, they run a slightly altered route and compete for consistency rather than outright speed.
Motorbikes are the most elite since riders need to simultaneously navigate, steer, and have their bodies out in the elements. Quads usually get lumped in with motorbikes but I didn’t see any at the 2025 race.
At the absolute top of the heap of Dakar badasses are those riding motorcycles in the “Original by Motul” class. Here, riders compete with no assistance. The race organizers give them an extremely limited, prescribed loadout carried from bivouac to bivouac, and beyond that, they’re on their own. Twenty-five brave souls attempted this in 2025, 15 finished, and the spread was extreme: Romanian Emanual Gyenes did it in about 58.5 hours on a KTM 450, while the last 2025 Original by Motul finisher was Simon Marcic from Slovenia who came in at over 223 hours on his Husqvarna.
For more context on how much time is usually spent racing, the 2025 outright winner was Saudi Yazeed Al Rajhi, running with navigator Timo Gottschalk from Germany in a tube-chassis Toyota Hilux. Their end time was just shy of 53 hours. The slowest cars were in the 170-hour neighborhood. The spread for big trucks was a little bigger, with slower ones coming in at over 200 hours. And of course, those times don’t count transits between stages and hours spent wrenching in between race days.
Racing the Dakar: A Day in the Life
Dawn:
Wake up in the dark and remember that Saudi Arabian winter is colder than it looks in pictures. If you’re lucky enough to be running for a well-funded factory team, you’re probably waking up in a comfy RV bed and getting a hint of breakfast whipped up by your private chef. At the bottom of the grid, you’re on a bedroll in the sand trying to wriggle pants on before getting in line for some grub with the legions of support staff and other privateer racers.
Morning:
Pre-race rituals include prayer, yoga, or dropping depth charges into a toilet depending on how the previous night’s dinner sat with you. But at least you’re not hungover, as alcohol is illegal in Saudi Arabia. You’ll be due at the starting line depending on what you’re driving. Motorcyclists often start first, followed by cars, buggies, and trucks.
A fire-side briefing the previous night would have informed you where to be and when, along with intel on weather, course conditions, and broad notes about the day’s route. If you’re racing with factory sponsorship, your team will carry your bags to the next bivouac. For privateers, there’s a specific Dakar-issue box you’re allowed to load all your possessions into, which is then humped to the next spot by a big truck—like checked luggage.
Go time:
Let’s say you’re in what’s classified as a “car” (though some cars have more suspension travel than an F-150 Raptor). You’ll get into a single-file line of vehicles moving toward the start. An official will take your phone, and your navigator’s, putting them in a sealed envelope before handing it back. You’ll be able to use it in an emergency, but pulling up Google Maps or something would constitute cheating.
Racers then pass by officials checking belts and harnesses. Finally, the download—five minutes before they green-light to race, the day’s digital roadbook will populate the vehicle’s navigation screen. You and your co-driver can hastily scroll through it to absorb as much context as possible, but it’ll be tough to keep much in your head. The Dakar Rally route is processed one step at a time.
Racing and reading the road book:
Once you’re hard charging down a hot course, you don’t have a GPS line to follow, markers in the wilderness, or any guidance you can passively absorb. This is what I mean saying the route, which organizers had been planning and refining since March, is processed “one step at a time” by racers.
The navigator’s screens feed the racers instructions which the pilot and co-pilot will basically interpret like this:
- Odometer: 0.0
Take a right at the rock in 0.2 kilometers - Odometer: 0.2
Go straight for 0.8 kilometers - Odometer: 1.0
Go left at the sand wash, follow for 5.0 kilometers - Odometer: 6.0
Exit sand wash, left at tree …
If you’re keen to learn the specifics, the Dakar Rally has a roadbook reference guide.
The actual roadbook (what these instructions are called) uses symbols and arrows to communicate landmarks, checkpoints, and, occasionally, hazards. Can you imagine the stress of trying to keep a car alive in extremely harsh off-road conditions, while taking directions in that absurdly strict format?
So your first question’s gotta be, “What if they make a wrong turn,” right? They have to backtrack … which is both difficult and dangerous. Not only could you find yourself facing oncoming racers at speed, but you’ve got to make sure you’re properly backtracking, otherwise you can get hopelessly lost in short order.
The second thing most people wonder is, “How the hell do the bikers do this without a co-driver,” and the answer is that those people are simply operating on an entirely different level of athleticism and skill. No disrespect to the car folk—heck, I was buzzing around only observing the course for three days in a nice-spec Land Rover and I still felt fatigued. But doing the Dakar on a bike is truly only possible by superhuman individuals.
Technicalities and road rules:
Each day at Dakar flows differently. Sometimes there are marathon stages in which racers aren’t allowed to receive help from support teams for long periods, occasionally there are slow zones where vehicles have to transit on public roads. Some stages have vehicles starting one at a time, sometimes there’s a lineup with a batch of racers charging for a holeshot. And the entire race format is quite different for classic cars altogether—they’re often speed-limited in sections and are scored more on consistency than outright velocity.
Cheating prevention:
We already covered how pulling out your phone mid-race is considered cheating and comes with a penalty, but how do race organizers make sure each vehicle is following the course path? There’s real-time satellite tracking and communications to every car, truck, and bike, but nobody’s specifically watching each map dot to make sure nobody cuts corners.
Instead, there are waypoints that vehicles have to pass through. As you approach one, you get a light on your satellite tracking device, and when you’re within its pinpoint (a spot of only a few square meters) you get another light confirming you’ve cleared the checkpoint. They’re referenced in the road book to give you some validation that you’re on the right track. Baja racing uses a similar system to keep people honest.
Recovery and reconciliation:
When you pull up to a Dakar finish line you might not necessarily be done driving. For example, after racers finished the AlUla to Hail segment of this year’s Dakar, they still had to drive for about an hour, on the road, at the posted speed limit, to make it to the bivouac before they could rest and recuperate.
Bivouac life is its own experience altogether. Each is a little different and we’ll get into the logistics of how these temporary race-supporting cities move later. But from a competitor’s perspective, the bivouac is home for a short period of time.
At a minimum, you’ll need to do some basic servicing on your vehicle (fresh filters, check torque on some bolts). The most fortunate drivers will be getting massages and physical therapy while pro mechanics do their tinkering. Those operating on a tighter budget will be their own support crews, and some could be up all night making repairs before slogging back into battle without sleep. Others will have been racing through injuries all day and might limp themselves to the hospital tent.
The doctor is in:
“Hospital tent” is an undersell—the Dakar Rally’s mobile medical center is a lot more advanced than what you saw on M.A.S.H., which is lucky because serious injuries are inevitable. My time with the race’s chief of health matters was so brief I couldn’t even catch her name, but she quickly slammed through some stats for me between answering questions from a whirl of staff members tugging at her sleeves.
The 2025 Dakar Rally had a medical staff of 80, all of which were skilled above paramedic status and ICU-trained. That team includes two surgeons and 10 physiotherapists, to deal with extreme trauma and more minor aches and pains respectively. Two helicopters are dedicated to medical response, but any of the 20-odd helos working the rally can be re-deployed as air ambulances in a pinch.
The director shared a brief anecdote about a helicopter having to dump a camera crew in the dunes one year so it could be sent to collect an injured biker. She made a wisecrack along the lines of “I’m not sure if we ever ended up picking them up again,” and shot me a little smile before one of the staff members overrode her attention and I had to scurry out of the way.
The vinyl-walled medical facility itself was cavernous, there must have been at least 10 makeshift hospital rooms divided by heavy plastic curtains. Outside, a mobile X-ray machine built into the back of a big rig was waiting to diagnose internal injuries.
Bivouac life:
Mechanical and medical matters are not the only business that might need to be taken care of by racers at the bivy—there are also scoring, timing, and positioning issues you might want to take up with the race organizers. Such things apparently come up more often than you might think—the Dakar has Competitor Relations Officers tasked specifically with hearing grievances and issues from racers.
If you have a problem with anything that happened during your day on the course, you can talk to a CRO who may then elevate the issue to a jury to make rulings like re-awarding time or adjusting a penalty.
One example where such a thing might come into play is if you stopped to help another competitor in need mid-race. Under certain circumstances, the administration may give you your time-stopped back. Since every car is satellite-tracked, it’s easy for organizers to check positioning and timestamps to corroborate if you were parked with somebody in trouble.
If racers have any ounces of energy left, the bigger bivouacs have merch tents and prayer tents, carpeted hangout areas, food vendors, and I even saw a big rig built out as a mobile bodega. One organizer told me the population of these mobile race towns is between 2,000 and 3,000 people.
The sense of community among racers was palpable. At the smaller camps on marathon stages of the rally, factory-sponsored racers were elbow-to-elbow with privateers eating on the carpet. At the larger bivouac, I saw a Spanish team break out the barbeque equipment and serve up paella to everybody within earshot. It’s clear that the rally forges friendships for life.
View from the command center:
While racers wrench, party, and rest, another office that’s always hard at work is race control. The Dakar Rally is effectively run from three command centers, there are two mobile offices built in expandable shipping containers carried on trucks where most monitoring and dispatching of assistance is done. If you’re allowed in, you’d find a circle of about 10 guys sitting around a conference table crowded with computers, satellite phones, and other comms equipment. On the wall is a screen showing the position and status of every single racer and official support vehicle on a digital map like a huge (and expensive) board game. A third ancillary center is operated in Paris, at the race-owning Amaury Sport Organisation’s headquarters, providing backup.
From there, management staff triages incidents, monitors weather, and fields any issues presented by Competitor Relations Officers. “We don’t think in terms of how many incidents,” one said when I asked about their schedule. “But the frequency.” In other words: It’s never a matter of “do we have issues to deal with?” It’s more like: “How many problems are happening at once?” Concurrent calamity is par for the course, and it’s race control’s job to make sure things are taken care of in the right order to maximize safety and efficiency.
Dinner:
A Dakar Rally wristband will scan you into a food tent, where you can grab a tray and get dollops of catered grub. Tents next door are designated for eating, but you might be sitting Saudi style—shoes off, on a rug, on the floor.
I got to experience this at one of the 2025 Dakar bivouacs and was pleasantly surprised to notice that the cold desert air is enough to neutralize the stench of raced-in socks. At any rate, your appetite will be too fierce to be deterred by such things if you’ve just completed a racing stage. And larger bivouacs did have more western-standard banquet tables, at any rate.
Rally for the driver’s meeting:
Normal comms between racers and admin is done through an app called Sportity, which provides basic info like who needs to be where and when. But each day of the Dakar concludes with a driver’s meeting, where an administrator will get up on a stage and run through important context for the next day; notes on the route, hazards to expect, weather, any speed-limited and highway-crossing sections, that kind of thing.
While the main presenter will likely be speaking French, English, or Spanish, there are also live translators re-reporting the briefing in real time and speaking into short-wave radios, which speakers of other languages will be listening to on headsets like it’s a dang U.N. council session.
Pack your bags and drag yourself to bed:
Once you’ve eaten, made sure your vehicle’s viable for the next day, and received tomorrow’s rundown from the race runners, all that’s left to do is pack your junk and pass out. Just don’t forget to set your alarm and get ready to do it all over again the next day.
Moving the Race Around a Country
We could write a whole encyclopedia on the specifics of Dakar logistics. But essentially, there are three main bivouac pack-ship-unpack operations that happen in kind of a double-leapfrog pattern. While one bivouac is established, the next one is already being built, while the previous one is being broken down to be shipped ahead of the second. The route is designed in such a way that makes this possible, but it ain’t easy any way you slice it.
Much of the site staff sleeps in incredible mobile dormitories built on semi-truck trailers, moving from site to site in a huge fleet of coach buses. VIPs are moved around faster in airplanes—a list is posted daily near the command center for staff to see when and where to report for the next bivouac movement.
Meanwhile, there are separate teams altogether setting up luxury camps and tourist camps for guests of sponsors and the media. Those do their own leapfrogging and stay in close communication with race control for safety and spectating opportunities.
One of the Last True Adventure Sports
For all the effort and anguish that goes into putting on the Dakar Rally, it’s not very accessible to spectators. The A.S.O. does a great job posting highlight reels, and the mobile media center I peeked in at was absolutely loaded with people broadcasting some version of the event (mostly to places outside the U.S.). Many end up capturing similarly small bits of the race. It is fun to watch a few clips of trucks bashing over dunes and tires spinning in sand in slow-motion. It’s never going to be a mass-appeal sport on the level of NASCAR or F1 because it’s not really practical, or even possible, to truly capture the real day-to-day drama of the Dakar and export it effectively to a wider audience.
Some of the people running and racing the Dakar do it for a paycheck. But most have to do it for the challenge; for the rare opportunity to truly test themselves against some of the meanest environments on planet Earth. If you were curious about how the Dakar works, I hope this blog post has helped you get a sense of this incredible race. If you want to go much deeper, you’ll have to get yourself out to Saudi Arabia next year.
Have you been to the Dakar or done anything in the rally-raid world? Drop the author a note at andrew.collins@thedrive.com! If you have any more questions about how the race works, drop a comment and wale’ll do our best to complete an answer.