Dakar Drama
Dakar Drama
RACE WATCH
MARK HOYER
KTM's thrill of victory is BMW's agonizing defeat
EVER HAVE ONE OF THOSE DAYS? EVER HAVE ONE OF those days last three weeks? That's the Paris-Dakar Rally, where even the winner takes a merciless beating. As for the losers, well, in addition to a beating, they also get beat. It's as much a struggle as it is a race, and the joy of winning is often only equaled by the joy that it's finally ending.
Ki M had becn trying since 94 to win in Dakar the world toughest oft-road rally The drought ended in `~ huge way this year L.d by 43-ycar old Dakar vcteian Fabrizio Meoni, the Aim man company took thc top fr'vc spots t Dakar f,r'~t one-upping BMW's top-four showing last year.
As near perfect as it was for K I M, it couldn't have gone any worse for BMW. And it was particular ly bad for our man Jimmy Lewis, back with the German factory team for a second go on the big Boxer Twin. "Let me put it this way: When I first rode the Dakar in `96, I was a privateer rid ing a production KTM 640. I got diar rhea for four days in the middle of the rally and dehydrated myself to death. I died. I was finished, air-evac'ed out. I simply had no water left in my body," Lewis said. "And even with all that, it was still more fun than this year's rally. This year was absolute hell." Gee, Jim my, tell us how you really feel...
Lewis was quietly confident about his chances in Paris-Dakar 2001. Testing had gone well, the BMW R900RR was faster than ever and the team seemed to have fixed the melting "mousse" foam-rubber tire-insert problem that held them back last year. Plus, he was fresh off a decisive win over some of the world's best rally rac ers in the UAE Desert Challenge in Dubai. Lewis intended to win.
"I was not going there to get second place. I knew our bike was capable of winning, and I was in about as good a condition as I could have been' said the man who finished third last year on the works Beemer and placed fourth in `97 as a KTM privateer.
Team KTM, meanwhile, had been working furiously in the off-season to ensure its near-700cc single-cylin der LC4s were ready for the rigors of Northern Africa-particularly after all the mechanical trouble the bikes suffered last year. Extra resolve came 2 from a tragedy suffered by the team during fall testing in Egypt. KTM development man Max Linhuber was following team riders Meoni and Giovanni Sala through a particularly fast section when he crashed and died from his injuries. In his honor, one of the KTM squads was named the Max Team, and the whole eight-bike effort was dedicated to him.
Dakar returned to its roots this year, and actually ran from Paris, the capital of France, to Dakar, the capital of Senegal. So in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower, some 140 racebikes motored away on cold, rain-soaked streets. The ride through Europe is just a giant liaison-3 transfer stage-to get to the real rally stuff in Africa. There were two short special tests in France, and there was one planned in Spain, but the Spanish motorcycle federation suddenly asked for $40,000 to let the 3.7-mile special test take place, and the organizers simply said no.
This essentially became a day off before the racing began in earnest in Africa. But once on the Dark Continent, it became clear this year’s route change did not suit the BMW team and its big, fast Twins.
“All my past Dakar experience indicated everything would be good,” Lewis said. “But this Dakar was nothing like the other three I’ve done. Most of the terrain was super-rough, and there wasn’t anything really fast except for one section. The whole race was just a beating. In the route book’s description of the stages, where it would say, ‘Alternates between fast and trialstype going,’ that would mean you went from medium-speed sections to extremely technical, first-gear rocks and boulders and camel grass.”
Camel grass?
“Camel grass is like a patch of wheat coming out of a bowling ball that’s embedded in extremely soft sand. That bowling ball can be bowling-ball size, or as big as a car tire. And the sand is so soft you don’t want to do much turning-you’re plowing, not turningbut you have to get around these clumps of grass and the small dunes they make. They're Supercross obsta cles in the desert sand, and there's like 100 miles of this crap at a time."
So, no, this rally was not ideal for a 420-pound, 90-horsepower desert ship built for warping for three hours at 120-per. Sure, there were a few short blasts up to top speed, but overall this rally favored lighter, more agile bikes. Bikes like the KTMs.
Apparently, somebody forgot to tell BMW's Juan Roma. The 28-year-old Spaniard rode for KTM last year, and his bike blew up while he was leading. This year he was riding a BMW Twin, and making a good go of it, hanging with KTM's Richard Sainct, who after winning the past two years on BMW Singles, elected to switch to a KTM Single rather than be forced to ride a BMW Twin.
The rally was shaping up to be a battle between these two, each riding for each other's former team, although Sainct held a small lead in the early stages.
) Lewis, meanwhile, faced his first real setback, a melted rear mousse j: during the first fast section. "About 20 miles from the end of the stage, I was pretty confident. I was right up there," he said. "KTM's Jordi Arcarons caught and passed me, but he broke his front wheel-completely collapsed it. I passed two or three more riders and caught up to a pack of guys, and then my rear mousse melted It was a really fast section, like 110 mph. In testing, we thought we'd fixed the problem, but something went wrong. It was a fluke, because two of us had the problem, two of u~ didn't. And it didn't happen again."
For Lewis, it meant starting farther back the next day, deeper in the dust and away from the fast lead riders. "I knew it would cost me time in the be ginning of the stage," he said. "But on the second day in Morocco, I was pass ing guys, I was still okay." Despite the tire setback, things were looking up. But then, disaster.
"At the end of the stage from Er Rachidia to Quarzazate, I hit a bump like any other bump, the same way I'd been hitting them all day long. But this time it caused a 70-mph get-off, a real ground-pounder," Lewis said. "I thought I broke both my wrists. Some how, I rode the 20 miles to the finish and ended up only losing 10 minutes on the day, but as far as I was con cerned, my wrists were broken, my ral ly finished. No way I was going to be able to ride the next day." -
The pain and realization set in hard: "I was crying the whole time back on the 60-mile liaison."
At the bivouac, the BMW team me chanics started working on the bent bike, while the team doctor examined Lewis to make sure the all-important scaphoid in his wrist wasn't broken. Herr Doktor didn't think it was, so they went over to the rally hospital for some medication-but no more. "If it had been broken, they would have stopped me from riding," Lewis said. "That's why we didn't let them X-ray it. And our doctor said, `If it's broken, it's not really one of the important bones, so if you can ride, then you can ride.'"
So Lewis rode the next day, following an afternoon and night of anti-inflammatories and working the wrists to keep them loose. From the highs of winning in Dubai and confidence about Paris-Dakar, Lewis was down to this: “I could operate the motorcycle, but it was incredibly painful. I was no longer racing. Now, I was just supporting the team. Roma was in the top two or three positions and he’d need the support. I was still in the top 10, but I knew I would start losing 20, 30 minutes a day, just because I couldn’t ride at the speeds those guys were riding.”
Sainct owned the overall lead, and indeed KTM was mostly in control of the top five, save for BMW interloper Roma, the only other rider who could keep up. Lewis was seventh, but more than an hour behind what he called the “real race.”
Then, during the stage prior to the much-needed mid-rally rest day, the face of that real race changed dramatically. Both pre-race favorites, Sainct and Roma, crashed hard. Sainct remounted, but later dropped out due to a shoulder injury and blown motor, the result of a crushed oil line. Roma was done on the spot.
on spot. “I was directly behind Sainct,” Roma said afterward. “It was very dusty on a stony track. Suddenly, I could hardly see anything anymore. I had to brake and then went flying over the handlebars. Unfortunately, the bike fell on me and I immediately thought I had broken my right lower leg.”
KTM’s strength at that point in the rally meant that Sainct’s DNF wasn’t a huge blow to the team-especially with Roma, BMW’s only hope of winning, leaving the rally in a medical helicopter.
“At that point, I was an hour behind,” Lewis said. “Then, all of a sudden, the teams’ hopes were again on me. But that day was another absolute disaster. The bike got stuck really bad going through some dunes and I wasn’t strong enough to break it free. Later, a big rock got kicked up and cracked the cases and all the oil poured out.” Jimmy limped in, borrowing oil from the precious few spectators along the course.
Meoni took over the lead, and KTM held down the top five going into the rest day. At this point, bikes get a major rebuild, and riders get a little rehab. The teams, meanwhile, reassess the direction of their efforts and strategy. For KTM it was clear: Keep control of the overall lead and don’t take any unnecessary risks-the rally was theirs to lose. Meoni had enough of a lead that the team decided to stop racing each other.
For BMW it was pretty simple, too. “Without Roma, there was no longer a chance to win the race,” said Lewis. “The team takes a step back and says, ‘Okay, let’s try to get our other two guys-John Deacon and Cyril Despres-win ning some stages. Plus, with Sainct's bike blowing up, we thought, `Well, maybe some of the other KTMs are going to blow, too.' With some luck, I could still end up on the podium. Anything could happen. But the KTMs were all running really good."
Even though the Orange Brigade slowed down some, Lewis, on the clos est BMW, was still losing the expected 20 to 30 minutes a day. From that point on, he was in survival mode, and only really managed to keep going with a little help from his friend Johnny Campbell, a Dakar first-timer riding an essentially stock Honda XR65OR with big fuel tanks. It turned out to be a symbiotic relationship. "He picked up my bike a couple of times when I fell over," Lewis said. "And he had trouble with his GPS and navigation equip ment, so I was able to help him out with that." Campbell, multi-time Baja winner for Team Honda, finished the rally an impressive eighth overall as the top amateur.
"He's in no way an amateur rider, but whenever somebody does the Dakar the first time, you're classified as one," Lewis explained.
The KTM team essentially held po sition to the end, and although Meoni led the last 11 stages, he was never to tally at ease. You can't be in Dakar. "If I could, I would prefer to walk the fi nal stretch," said the Italian. "Then I could be sure that all would go accord ing to plan!"
There was one last shot at glory for Lewis, and he tried to take the final stage win, a short loop near Dakar.
"KTM's Kari Tiainen was right in front of me," Lewis said. "I wicked it up in the sand to pass him, but as I went through this gradual turn, it got really choppy. The bars started to shake, and I just couldn't hold on. I crashed and broke my collarbone. I picked up the bike-I don't know how the hell I picked it up-and rode to the finish. I turned in my card and asked for the doctor. It was a fitting end to the rally for me."
Lewis lost a spot and ended the race seventh, behind teammate Deacon, while KTM filled the top five. Meoni said he rode the last stage thinking only about the finish line, and was ecstatic to finally win after a decade of trying.
Asked for his final thoughts on the rally, Lewis clutched his broken collar bone with his swollen, aching wrist, and said with a sort of pained smile, "Man, I am one sore loser."
