Dakar 2023 is here. With exactly 30 days before the start of the toughest test in the world, ASO, the organizing company of the Dakar, presented the details of the route of Dakar 2023 this Thursday in Paris. This year, the race will start at December 31st in the preface phase from one of the great novelties of the edition, the ‘Sea Camp’, the camp where the participants and members of the bivouac will live before the start of an appointment that ends on the 15th.
Dakar 2023 will be an adventure of 8,549 kilometers, 4,706 of which are timed specials. Yann Le Moenner, CEO of ASO and David Castera, director of Dakar, this edition of the course presented a great challenge for everyone. David assured that, after talking to the participants at the end of the 2022 edition, he has the goal of creating a more difficult race with more sand and sand. That’s what he and his team did, translating those goals into a route with more stages, longer, very demanding and that would enter a few days into the dreaded ‘Empty Quarter’ (Empty Quarter), a place which is filled with kilometers and kilometers of sand dunes. in the middle of the void where the participants will live the original spirit of the highest Dakara.
The ‘Sea Camp’
So that the participants do not spread out in dozens of different hotels like last year in the days before the race, a context in which two vehicles were attacked, the ASO prepared an advance camp on the coast of the Red Sea . This is a special bivouac, with “greater luxury” that will bear little resemblance to ordinary bivouacs. There, the members of the Dakar caravan will have a soccer field or other entertainment such as table football to relax a little between their administrative, technical and preparation obligations before the start of the adventure. In this way, it will return to the origin of the test and the participants will experience more of the Dakar atmosphere from the previous days, and above all, the organization will be able to combine all the participants and vehicles in one camp to increase the security of all races.
There are no neutralizations
Another novelty was emphasized by one of the pilots present in Paris, Sébastien Loeb. The French driver, 9-time world rally champion and runner-up in the 2022 Dakar and the first FIM World Raids Championship (W2RC), said that this year “we will not have neutralizations and we have to do specials at the same time -together. “.
The importance of this change is enormous for every pilot’s strategy. This is how Sébastien explained: “Before, in the neutralization zone you could see if you were ahead or behind and you could adjust your speed in the second part of the special. Today we will drive 400 km without any information. We will have who is focused without rest for 4 or 5 hours and has no information on how the race is going. It is an endurance rally, you have to find a suitable rhythm and make as few mistakes as possible”.
Source: La Verdad
I’m Rose Herman and I work as an author for Today Times Live. My expertise lies in writing about sports, a passion of mine that has been with me since childhood. As part of my job, I provide comprehensive coverage on everything from football to tennis to golf.
