Catch all the Dakar action on SS2
Right now, 10 South Africans are preparing to battle sand dunes, altitude sickness and the non-stop physical pounding that the world’s greatest off-road race, the Dakar Rally, dishes out to the hundreds of competitors from around the planet who make the start line each year.
The race starts in Lima, Peru, on Saturday and is scheduled to end in Santiago in Chile on January 20, and the finishers will have covered more than 8 000 km of the toughest terrain imaginable.
Daily highlights will be broadcast at 10:30pm on SuperSport 2 with repeats throughout the day.
For the second year in a row, South African Giniel de Villers will be driving a South African-built Toyota Hilux, and once again he’ll be going for glory. A 2009 winner for Volkswagen, last year he and his German co-drive Dirk von Zitsewitz finished in third spot, a remarkable achievement in a brand new machine.
His SA teammates, Duncan Vos and Rob Howie, will be in a second Hilux built at the Toyota Motorsport workshops in Midrand, and incidentally, there will be a total of eight South-African-built Hiluxes built taking part, the remainder being entered by European teams. Vos and Howie finished an impressive 10th in their very first Dakar.
In the motorcycle section, our own Darryl Curtis finished an excellent 22nd last year and he’s back in 2013on a KTM.
This year 196 entries were received for the motorcycle category and backing up Darryl’s South African challenge will be Riaan van Niekerk, also on a KTM, Brett Cummings on a Honda and Glen Grundig. They are scheduled to start way down the field as they are Dakar first-timers, while Darryl Curtis was allotted start-number 37 in the biking category.
Other South Africans to watch for are Sarel van Biljon in the Quads division, and Johan van Staden and Mike Lawrenson in a ProDakar team-entered McRae in the car division.
