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A little background

I thought I would start my own blog after seeing all the crap that others (especially Flyhiflylo, aka Fly) are putting out on The Dakar Rally.

I've been very interested in the Dakar ever since a one time acquaintance Danny LaPort rode it as part of team Cagivia back in the early 1990's. In 1992 Danny became the first American to win a stage in the Dakar and finished 2nd over all, still the highest finish of any American to date. One of my other favorite riders, Malcolm Smith had also participated in the Dakar several years earlier. Both Danny and Malcolm reported that the Dakar was THE toughest event they had ever done. Danny spoke of what it was like to ride at high speed day after day trying to navigate and maintain speed without crashing or getting lost. The words he used included: "You can't ride at almost 100mph for that long day after day and not crash! It's just a matter of when and where."

For some reason most of my fellow Baja racing enthusiasts were just not interested in racing the Dakar. That is until Mark Miller caught the Dakar bug. Mark had done the Atlas Rally on a bike with team KTM so his interest in Dakar is not hard to understand.

I first met Mark Miller when I was asked to join the Herzog Vortec Trailblazer Trophy Truck team in 1999. The Vortec Trailblazer team was a dream team of all star drivers and mechanics. We raced the 1999 Baja 1000, and then in 2000 we competed in the Nevada 2000 and the Baja 2000. During that time I got to know Mark a little bit and was introduced to Ryan Arciero, and became a true follower of Don Tibbe who was the team manager.

In 2001 Mark re-built his pro-truck to race in the Trophy Truck class in SCORE. That year I passed on being part of the Baja 500 and flew as air support for Robby Gordon & Greg Till in the Baja 1000. Both Miller & Gordon failed to finish the race due to mechanical problems. After the event I decided not to work with Team Gordon anymore and was asked by Don Tibbe (who had joined with Mark as Team Manager) to join Mark Miller Racing as chase crew.

In 2002 Mark raced the Dakar in a "spec" Toyota Trophy Land Cruiser diesel with Dirk Von Zitzewitz as his co-driver & navigator. Although they encountered tons of problems they managed to finish the event in first place for the class. In 2004 Mark managed to obtain a pro-truck to race with from the French Team “Pro-Systems”. Unfortunately when they arrived in Europe the week before the event the truck was still in pieces. Mark later said that he and probably should have never attempted to start the race. The following year Mark skipped the Dakar and Ryan Arciero drove in a similar ride to the Land Cruiser Mark had reced before.

Dirk joined Team VW with the Touarag and ended up co-driving and navigating for Robby Gordon who accepted an offer which apparently came through a common sponsor of his Trophy Truck and VW’s Dakar effort, Red Bull Energy Drink. Robby's ride with VW was ill fated as his rouge style just didn't fit the massive VW team. Robby was never able to communicate his setup skils with the VW engineers on suspension. Failure to trust and listen to his navigator, Dirk, basically cost Robby his oportunity to finish well as team orders caught him back in the pac and odd man out. Robby had to settle for a supporting role for the remainder of the event.

The 2006 Dakar was full of changes for the Gringos racing The Dakar. Robby put a package together with Darrin Skilton in what is being called by the marketing people a “Hummer H3”. In a brilliant move, Gordon re-configured a Class 1 buggy his shop had built and placed a custom Fiberglass Hummer body on it. Skilton brought to deal valuable Dakar experience and support vehicles. Unfortunately, the effort was also ill fated, perhaps from the start. The entire program was a rush job from its inception.

A short digression:

A couple of years ago I came across Danny LaPorte at a Supercross race. Knowing his love for the Dakar, I asked Danny just what would it take to get him to go back? Danny laughed and said he highly doubted he would return because “to do the Dakar, you need to commit all of your energy for an entire year to that one event”. He said he just couldn’t afford to take that amount of time for a single event.

Besides trying to slap a Dakar team together in the last minuets, the other major mistake made was to try to hang with the front runners while not having a support vehicle entered as a race vehicle. What this means was that all of Robby’s help was sitting in the bivouac waiting for him not to show up at the end of the day! Radio communication from the race car on the course is strictly forbidden so there is no way to get word out as to where you are or what your problem is. The other thing is that in the Dakar only race vehicles are allowed on the race course and only after the course has closed non-racing support vehicles are allowed to go out and retrieve their dead. Of course I under stand the great cost associated with doing the Dakar and that no one has unlimited budgets. However, if you are going to do the Dakar, you have to realize the importance of the support vehicles entered in the event as race vehicles before you start bragging about winning, to do otherwise just show how little you know about the event. Could it be that in his first attempt with his own team in Dakar, Robby was so far in over his head he and his fans didn’t even know it?? The pics of teh Hummbuggy jumping in the dunes while the rest of the teams were still racing do look go though don't they??

It was obvious to me that listening to the playground smack of the Rubby fans and the Robby Gordon Media Machine they had no idea what the Dakar is about. The arrogance and ignorance of the Rubby fanatics is simply amazing. “Flash” Gordon was in his element as far as media and fan hype was concerned. Photo opportunities abounded and the chance to win a meaningless early stage to grab attention continued to be too much to resist.

The Dakar rally is very much like the other event the organizing body ASO promotes Le Tour de France. You can not win the race by grabbing a couple of wins that gains little time advantage. Large teams also have tactics that are by design traps for other teams and competitors to fall into. Team tactics are more and more important the closer you get to Dakar. A “jackrabbit” member of the team will be sent out as a sacrificial lamb just to get others to chase at a pace that is impossible to maintain without damaging your equipment and wearing your support crew out. If the Jackrabbit has a problem, they still have others on the team who have held back at the proper race pace insuring a strong finish. Remember WINNING STAGES MEANS NOTHING!!! How much time you gain over your competition is the only thing that matters!

As with any type of endurance racing, pace is everything. When endurance racing with a team, the pace of the entire team must be taken into consideration. Break a transmission and you cause your team to work extra hard through the night, remember they too have had to travel from bivouac to bivouac. My conversations with those who have worked as support crew in the Dakar report that they don’t remember much about the event due to sleep deprivation, the event is a 15 day trash that is remembered as a haze. Hurting the race car causes a domino effect that will eventually come around and bite you in the butt. Tired people make mistakes, have short tempers, and low morale. There is more than one way to let the Dakar beat you and poor team dynamics is just one of them.