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Dakar
  • 11/03/2025
The 47th edition of the Dakar has set a date for the world's rally-raiders in Saudi Arabia from 3 to 17 January.

More information:
https://www.dakar.com
https://www.facebook.com/Dakar
https://www.twitter.com/Dakar
https://www.instagram.com/DakarRally
#Dakar2025

© Amaury Sport Organisation - https://www.aso.fr

Catégorie

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Sport
Transcription
00:00In 1993, I won the Dakar.
00:07I was with Dominique Serriès and I was still the new kid on the block.
00:13I didn't have the same experience as the guys I was up against.
00:16And there was an impressive field that year with five factory Citroëns and five factory Mitsubishis.
00:22You had to manage your way through this unique event,
00:25but you couldn't hang around because you were facing some top drivers.
00:29Among those top drivers were Auréol, Latigue and Vattenen
00:32and the quality of the line-up was matched by the difficulty of the stages.
00:36I don't always remember the names of the stage towns because there were so many of them,
00:40but I'll never forget Benyounif to El Golea.
00:46One of the most important stages of the rally and we were right in at the deep end, 800 km.
00:51It was a stage from hell.
00:59That year we only had two spare wheels in the car, so it was pretty ambitious to do 800 km with two spares.
01:05Pretty quickly, after maybe 100 or 200 km, we'd already had two punctures.
01:10We were thinking, we've still got to do 600 km with no spare wheels.
01:14So we changed our strategy.
01:16We slowed down, we avoided the stones.
01:18It was hard to avoid them all, but at least the big ones.
01:21And we just prayed that we wouldn't puncture again and tried to get to El Golea.
01:29This second stage between Morocco and Algeria turned into a nightmare for many competitors
01:35as hopes of glory faded away in the Sahara sands.
01:42Incredibly, one third of all vehicles in the rally got stuck and were forced to retire.
01:51We were up for the adventure, even if we knew how hard it was going to be.
01:55We tried to keep a steady pace and take extra care, not get stuck in the sand, not puncture, not damage the car.
02:02And we found the right balance because when we got to El Golea, they told us, you're the first ones here.
02:14Our devices weren't working, so we had to do it all ourselves and we weren't afraid to get creative.
02:18We ended up in these dunes with 150 km to go and we didn't know how to get to El Golea.
02:24We didn't know how to get through them. There were no tracks, there was nothing.
02:31We waited for a long time until finally Pierre Lartigue arrived and he was a proper rally raid specialist.
02:36He knew what he was doing.
02:40So pretty early in that Dakar I opened up a big lead and from then I was just able to manage the rally, which was super tough.
02:49We've only got 15 cars at the finish. The first crew crossed the line last night at 7.55pm.
02:56We've also got three bikes and six trucks. Everyone else is still out there in the dunes.
03:03It's one of the highlights of my career, of my life. You come to realise that Dakar is something else.
03:08And having it on my CV, I would say it was the crowning glory of everything that I'd achieved up to that point.