Bmw Wins Dakar!
BMW WINS DAKAR!
RACE WATCH
Frenchman Richard Sainct holds off a horde of KTMs to win the world’s toughest rally
PAUL SEREDYNSKI
MENTION DAXAR, AND BMW ISN'T FAR OFF. For many motorcyclists, the two are endlessly tied. Any mention of the world's toughest off-road race brings to mind helicopter-perspective images of bulbous-tanked Boxers moving impossibly fast across the sands of the world's largest desert. The subsequent R100GS Paris-Dakar replicas, adorned with the red-and-white factory livery, were the epitome of early-1990s funky-cool.
This past January marked the 21st running of the famous North African off-road toil, and with a major rule change discouraging two-cylinder machines (read: Yamaha Twins), another European manufacturer hoped to burn a new color scheme into the minds of enthusiasts. With Yamaha applying its resources to other interests (and six-time Dakar bike winner Stephane Peterhansel behind the wheel of a Nissan truck) an orangeand-blue armada of KTMs descended upon the desert.
KTM’s highly developed Singles arrived en masse at the start point for the 1999 Granada-Dakar Rally to finally demonstrate the Austrian maker’s offroad dominance. And dominate it did, with factory-supported riders taking seven of the top-10 spots and two podium positions. Unfortunately, this triumph did not include the top of the box. BMW rider Richard Sainct narrowly fended off the KTM swarm to capture his first Dakar victory on a BMW F650 Funduro. It was BMW’s fifth win, but its first in 15 years.
Pre-rally, KTM was consid ered a shoe-in for victory. Eighty-one of the 164 motor cycles entered were KTMs, with unprecedented support (six trucks transporting more than 30,000 pounds of supplies) for the top-15 riders. And two months before the rally was scheduled to begin, Frenchman Sainct also played a key role in the KTM juggernaut.
BMW returned to Dakar last year, its first foray onto the Dark Continent in 13 years. Anticipating the “pleaseleave-the-Twins-at-home” ruling, company officials arrived with a modified version of the successful F650 dualpurpose bike. But in an inauspicious debut, only one of the four Rotax-engined bikes entered in the race actually reached Dakar-in 35th place.
And yet 28-year-old Sainct, safely supported by KTM’s proven entry, jumped ship. What gives? First off, the F650s that BMW brought to Dakar this year only distantly resembled the cheerily monikered production bike that was launched in 1993. The rally machine was developed by Gottfried Michels and Dakar team manager Richard Schalber (with internal help from company engineers) for BMW Motorrad’s Team Enduro. In > race trim, it produced a claimed 75 horsepower, up from the streetbike's paltry 42 bhp. With a 112-mph top speed, the Beemer would theoretically be able to outrun its rivals.
Secondly, and more important to Sainct, there was the team: “It was smaller and more professional, much more professional,” he said. “I wasn’t happy with the support from KTM, and so I took the risk to go to BMW where the support was better, but where the motorcycle was a bit of a surprise.
“The BMW’s motor was more powerful, but that doesn’t really make that big a difference,” Sainct continued. “I knew that if I didn’t have any problems with the bike, there’d be no reason for me not to do well.”
BMW’s four-bike squad included renowned development rider Jean Brucy (the Frenchman who nursed the sole F650 to the finish last year) and Spain's Oscar Gallardo, another rally favorite. Germany's Andrea Mayer, the top woman finisher in 1996, rounded out the Bavarian bunch.
Pitted against the BMW quartet was KTM’s phalanx of talent. Using a Dream Team/shotgun approach, KTM’s factory squad included Dakar heavyweights Fabrizio Meoni, Thierry Mag naldi, Heinz Kinigadner, Giovanni Sala, Alfie Cox, Juan Roma, Jordi Ar carons and Jurgen Fink.
While the rest of the world slept off New Year’s hangovers, Dakar’s 278 vehicles departed Granada on Spain’s southern coast for Rabat on Morocco’s northern coast, the first stage in a 17day, 6000-mile trek to the famed Senegalese capitol. Rough seas hindered ferries carrying competitors on the first stage, a bellwether for a rally that appeared relatively easy on paper, but would prove otherwise from the saddle.
Once in Africa, the race got off to a very fast start, with KTM’s Kinigadner setting a breakneck pace. The top riders reluctantly matched his pace, with the BMWs hanging close. After three stages, the first seven riders > were separated by less than 1 minute.
As the desert opened up, the BMW pilots put their machines’ muscle to use. Gallardo won the fourth stage with Sainct third. Stage five, the longest of the marathon stages (390 miles) and the first with major dunes, proved a killer, knocking out 32 of the 137 riders who started the day. The top-five riders finished within seconds of one another, with Sainct third and Gallardo fourth, moving them to 1-2 in the overall standings. “I’m not worried about what they’re doing over there,” Sainct said after the stage, motioning toward the KTM camp, “I’m just riding steady and keeping in mind that there are still 10 days left to go.”
Gallardo held the overall lead until stage seven, when a dead battery sidelined him for four hours. Meoni won the stage, but Sainct moved into the overall lead, a position he would not relinquish. The next day, 75 bikes, less than half the original field, began the eighth stage of this socalled “easy” event.
Safety concerns in Mali forced the organizers to re-route stage nine to end in Mopti instead of Gao, putting the bikes more than 600 miles from the stage-11 start in Timbuktu. In an unprecedented move, Stage 10 was canceled and the bikes were airlifted
to Timbuktu. With 10 stages in the books, the race had come down to Sainct, Magnaldi, Meoni and Cox. At this point, the top riders simply paced each other, a situation that confused world enduro champ Kari Tianen: "These desert racers are strange. For the whole special, they ride slowly and then, 90 kilometers from the end, they put their brains in their bum bags and hold the throttle to the stop."
Running second overall, Magnaldi pared Sainct's lead to 2 minutes by stage 11, a day highlighted by 22 ve hicles being ambushed at gunpoint. Eight were stolen, with the bandits departing with the words, "See you next year." ("You see this?!" queried CW Off-Road Editor and former Dakar stage-winner Jimmy Lewis. "Really makes you want to rush back to Dakar.")
Sainct responded by winning stage 12. Magnaldi won 13. Then Sainct took 15, arriving in Dakar for the 16th and final stage with a 4-minute lead. “I wanted to have a 3or 4-minute cushion going into that final special,” Sainct explained. “Unless I had those minutes going into that stage, which was really short-like a motocross with a group start-it would have been really dangerous with all those KTM riders right there trying to win the race.” Sainct needn’t have worried, as results from the final stage were tossed out after multiple riders, including Magnaldi, cut the course. Sainct won the rally by a 4-minute, 9-second mar gin, one of the closest in Dakar histo ry. It also proved one of the toughest: of 164 bikes that began, only 54 reached the finish. Magnaldi finished second with South Africa's Cox third.
“This year, they thought it would be easier,” Sainct said from his hometown of Saint Afrique, France (imagine a guy from Augusta, Greece, winning The Masters). “But it was much harder because the stages were extremely long, with many kilometers every day.”
Sainct was very happy with the machinery. “Except for some trouble with the logbook (which had him off-course on several occasions), the bike ran great. For only its second year in Dakar, that's a pretty incredible performance."
As for the other BMW entries, Gallardo placed ninth and Mayer, the only female rider to make it to Dakar, finished 32nd. KTM took 17 out of the top-25 positions, and will field an equally strong team next year. It will, however, have to face Sainct and BMW again. “It takes a lot to win such a difficult race,” Sainct said. “I could win it a bunch more times, or maybe I’ll never win it again. It’s too hard to even try to predict such a thing. But I’m sure I’ll be able to put the bike in a position where I can win again. I’m 28, so I’ve got a little bit left.”
So, can we expect a whole new generation of rally replicas? BMW plans to bring the F650 racebike to Daytona, Florida, for Bike Week, perhaps to gauge market response. If a slew of replicas do arrive, expect a more lowslung look, rather than the giant, orangutan-tanked bikes of the early 1990s.
KTM, of course, already has its roadgoing Adventure. But it hasn’t won Dakar...yet. In fact, there’s little KTM can do to improve its chances at Dakar. With its current program, an overall win should be inevitable. In the future, though, the company may focus on just a few top riders, as some have suggested that KTM spread itself a little thin. Until then, BMW rules the roost. □
