Old favourites and rugby stars in tow, Dakar rally comes to South America

The rally crosses the Pampas, heads into Patagonia, arrives at the Andes next Thursday, drives into Chile the following day, cruises up alongside the Pacific for five days including a loop in the Atacama Desert, then heads back to the start.

“The drivers will discover a new territory, another landscape, but they are imbued with the same spirit of competition and adventure,” rally director Etienne Levigne said.

The 2008 race was cancelled because of security fears after four French tourists and three Mauritanian soldiers were killed before the start. The French government warned of a terrorist threat with links to al-Qaida, and the race was cancelled for the first time in its 30-year history.

But Levigne promised it would race again, and moved it to South America with the hope of returning to Dakar in 2011 or 2012.

With scrutineering completed on Thursday, Dakar’s South American version included an unofficial 530 vehicles made up of 82 trucks, 188 cars, 30 quad bikes and 230 motorcycles, nearly all of them shipped from Europe.

Many of the competitors are familiar. As in recent years, the car race was expected to be a showdown between the Mitsubishis led by French great Stephane Peterhansel and the Volkswagens by two-time world rally champion Carlos Sainz.

Plenty of competition

Mitsubishi has dominated the race since 2001, but this year it has changed models from Pajero to Lancer and the fuel to diesel, finally copying Volkswagen. Peterhansel leads the race in titles — nine; six on a motorbike, three in a car — and stage wins, and will have plenty of competition from the other Lancers driven by 2006 winner and Olympic skiing champion Luc Alphand and two-time Dakar champion Hiroshi Masuoka.

Sainz was entered in his third Dakar, and spearheaded a strong Volkswagen lineup with Giniel De Villiers, Mark Miller, and Dieter Depping. Cyril Despres and Marc Coma, winners of the last three motorbike titles, and Vladimir Chagin, the five-time truck champion, were racing.

Also among the entries were first-timers and former France rugby internationals, Philippe Bernat-Salles in a car and Christian Califano on a motorbike.

After a parade from the Obelisk in the center of Buenos Aires to a park in Palermo, where the race will officially start on Saturday, the first stage was 733 kilometres south to Santa Rosa.