Dakar 2023: what the route through Saudi Arabia will be like and how many Argentines will participate

The dakar rally It was presented in Paris, where, as usual, details of the impending desert engagement were given. The competition will start on December 31 in Saudi Arabia and will conclude on January 15, after crossing that Middle Eastern country from west to east. The test will start on the shores of the Red Sea and end on the shores of the Persian Gulf.

will participate 632 contestants, while another 188 will correspond to the Dakar Classic. Within the Dakar, 124 riders will compete on motorcycles, 19 on quads, 73 on cars and 56 on trucks. The rest (47 and 46) will be divided between the T3 and T4 classes.

In the Dakar Classics alone, 76 will be in cars and 13 in trucks. Among the conventional competitors, 150 will be newcomers, 131 “Legends”, while 27 motorcyclists or quads will be Original by Motul.

In total, there will be representatives of 68 countriesincluding 50 women, and five exclusively female crews.

The largest delegation will be from France, with 194, followed by Spain, with 119, and the Netherlands, with 90. Argentina will have 13 representativeseven if there will be 24 in the race, given that many national sailors will participate in the race.

In the heart of a bivouac with an unprecedented format, where the participants in the Dakar will gather during the last technical checks, the podium ceremony will also take place, which will be the real starting signal. As soon as the ramp is lowered, the vehicles will head towards the Sea Camp exit where the start of a short special of 11 kilometers along the tracks by the sea will be set up.

Upon returning to the bivouac, the differences recorded will be minimal, but crucial in defining the starting order for the following day. The first ten cars and the first fifteen bikes will take the floor in reverse order of their classification and will choose their starting positions, over a course of 368 kilometres.

The next day, January 1, 2023, the caravan will leave for Al Ula.

The total path of the test will be 8549 kilometres with 4,706 special stages divided into 14 stages plus a prologue. The connecting sections, meanwhile, total 3,333 kilometres. Stopping between the Red Sea Sea Camp and Damman, the caravan will call at Al-Ula, Hail, Al Duwadimi, Riyadh, Haradh, Shaybah and Al Hofuf.

Argentines at the Dakar

There will be five Argentines on motorbikes. Attention goes to brothers Kevin Benavides (KTM) and Luciano Benavides (Husqvarna). The oldest from Salta, the first Latin American rider to win the Dakar in the category, continues to be one of the main references for KTM.

There will also be other brothers. Franco Caimi (Hero) and Stefano Caimi (KTM) from Mendoza. The fifth representative is Diego Llanos (KTM).

In cars, the national pilots will be the traditional Orly Terranova (Hunter), the most experienced in these editions of the Dakar. They are all from Mendoza, as Sebastián Halpern (MINI) and Juan Cruz Yacopini (Toyota) will also race.

The popular Juan Manuel Silva will race light UTV vehicles. This time, “Pato”, who competed in trucks last year, switched to this type of vehicle, this time with Yamaha, via the Puma Energy Rally Team. Nicolás Cavigliasso (Yamaha), Jeremías González Ferioli (Can-Am), Mauro Esteban Lipez (Can-Am) and David Zille (Can-Am) will also race.

In the quads, the Lobos rider Manuel Andujar, already winner of the Dakar, will race with Yamaha. Francisco Moreno Flores (Yamaha), Alejandro Fantoni (Yamaha), Julio Estanguet (Can-Am) and Carlos Verza (Yamaha) will also be in the great adventure. Also, as usual, the expert Pablo Copetti will race, even if he does so with a US licence.

The teams are already on their way to Saudi Arabia. The boat Amaury Sport Organization (ASO), the company that organizes the competition, transports most of the vehicles that aim to cross Saudi Arabia from West to East, passing through the Empty Quarter area, the most oil producing area of that country. of the Middle East, with an unprecedented journey in these four years of Arab adventure.