They have crossed the final finish line of the Dakar but their faces are nervous. Force it. Uncertainty. “We know nothing”He said Jan Rosa, co-pilot, with his pilot Carlos Santaolalla, while checking the results on his mobile. They are still not updating and the screen is blank. After two weeks of intense competition, they will be able to fulfill a lifelong dream. But they have to wait.
They clearly led the Dakar Classic through the first 8 stages, but a penalty for a trippy problem on stage 9 nullified their advantage and left them second. They managed to regain the lead with their good pace and went into the final stage with just one point ahead of second. They played it in the last kilometers: The competitor who finishes first in the final special stage wins the Dakar Classic. And after a few endless seconds to update the rank, Jan shouted: “Carlos!” And without a word, he hugged his pilot. It goes without saying that they are champions. Everything is clear. Carlos Santaolalla’s next scream at his steering wheel reached Barcelona. They are champions of the Dakar Classic. Like Carlos Sainz and Lucas Cruz, winners of the Dakar in cars, and Cristina Gutiérrez and Pablo Moreno, kings of the Challenger class, they triumphed in the Classic to complete a historic Spanish triplet.
A few weeks after that, Carlos Santaolalla (9-9-1964, Barcelona) and Jan Rosa (9-6-2001, Girona) visited MD with his two ‘touaregs’ to explain a story full of tributes and dreams.
double promise
Carlos always wanted to run the Dakar but was unable to do so due to a lack of budget. And then, when creating his own companies, he did not find time to do it. The creation of the Classics category gave him the opportunity to compete in the race of his life (budgets were smaller) and allowed him to pay tribute to his friend Teresa by debuting in Dakar 2022.
Santaolalla satisfied his passion for exploring the deserts of North Africa by off-road vehicle 25 or 30 years ago with a group of friends who included Teresa. “You are a very good pilot. “Why don’t you compete in the Dakar?” he said to her. “You sail very well. The day I achieve this, you will be my co-pilot,” replied Carlos. However, Teresa died a few years before Carlos’ debut in that Dakar Classic 2022. To fulfill his promise he wanted to enter the deserts of Saudi Arabia with Teresa’s son, Aran, with the hope of completing his name
A few years later, at the 2024 Dakar Classic, fate fulfilled another promise. “I have a friend in palliative care at the hospital and the last day I visited him before going to the Dakar, I told him: ‘I will win the Dakar and I will dedicate it to you. .’ Because of this, the first thing Santaolalla did when he got out of his car after becoming champion in January was to point his fingers to the sky in memory of his friend.
Pilot and co-pilot by chance
But the story of Santaolalla and Jan Rosa is more than promises. It is also synonymous with optimism and is a good example.
After two participations in the Dakar Classic, Carlos clearly said that if he returns to the Dakar it will be to test the speed, but he does not have the necessary budget for it. He has no plans to go to the Dakar in 2024 and his co-driver at the time, Aran, joined another project. But one day he got a call from Aran because another Classics colleague, Jan Rosa, had a problem: he didn’t appear on the registration list. “I looked at the numbers and couldn’t find them. That’s when I knew I wasn’t going to Dakar,” Jan recalled to MD, a ‘copy’ of only 22 years old who loves classic cars above all else. Finally, Aran put him in touch with Carlos Santaolalla.
“I was with my wife in the car, there were only 4 weeks left to ship the cars, and I looked at my wife and said: ‘What am I going to do?’ ‘Yourself,’ he replied. And then I said to Jan: ‘Do you want to win the Dakar?’ And when he responded affirmatively, I told him that we will see if we still have time to register,” says Santaolalla.
“I have two days to do everything. We confirmed the mechanics team (Pedrega Team) and the car, which stopped since last year. We didn’t do anything and the mechanic told me: ‘we will check it and it will take some time’”he recalled with a laugh as Jan said that “despite this, Carlos still thought we would win.”
With an iconic car owned by Jacky Ickx
In that hope, they beat more than 80 vehicles, some of which had unlimited budgets. They did it on the wheel of a Toyota Land Cruiser with Jacky Ickx He would compete with his daughter, though in the end they couldn’t start because she got sick. This car returned to the Dakar a few years later in several editions with other drivers at the wheel, a vehicle declared iconic by the Dakar.
Carlos and Jan have never competed together and despite this they won in a very complicated category where the co-driver has to control many parameters at the same time on a route different from the speed of the Dakar. They must control the navigation, but at the same time, the regularity, making the calculations constant so as not to exceed the meters in the journey or the average speed. enough to complete the sections in the indicated time.
Another second is a penalty. Also less than a second. And travel more or less meters, too. So, it’s a goldsmith that Jan plays perfectly naturally.. And Jan Rosa, a native of Fornells de la Selva (Girona), is used to doing many things at the same time in his life. He is studying three careers: law, business administration and political science. And he has time to teach guitar lessons, direct an ‘Esplai’, and one more thing: being champion of the Dakar.
“In a day we do about 300 average speed changes. Adding value to the Dakar Classic involves understanding the work the pilot and co-pilot do. We do navigation, but at the same time we have to do the regularity, which is something very difficult and requires all the attention of the co-pilot.”highlights Jan.
Elo Catalan sailor has been in love with the classics since he started in this world with his father in regional events in Girona. And at 22 years old he already has a ‘touareg’ at home. A great mind that may aspire to many raids, but has nothing else in mind but to continue to enjoy his passion for historic cars.
Visibility of ADHD
Carlos and Jan want to prove the value of the Dakar Classic because of the huge competition in the category and the complexity of its stages. They are also champions like Sainz or Cristina. But above all, they want to send a more important message to society, running and winning to give visibility to ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) and dyslexia. For this reason, the initiatives of #Desetiquétame are presented in his Toyota.
“You can win a Dakar with rampant ADHD like mine, and you can have a business with ADHD or being dyslexic. It is a different way of learning or understanding yourself. Now more people know him, but he still has a long way to go,” explained Carlos, Dakar Classic champion and founder and owner of a leading European tube company. An example that ADHD should not be an obstacle to achieving dreams
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.
