The Dakar Rally has killed 80 people since its first running in 1979. Those numbers include the guy who founded the rally, 23 spectators, four children and 14 journalists. We went to Saudi Arabia to see what makes a sane person like Sara Price pick a fight with the gnarliest terrain on Earth!
Check out the full story at https://www.utvdriver.com/utv-videos/dakar-rally-deadliest-side-by-side-race-on-earth/
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Check out the full story at https://www.utvdriver.com/utv-videos/dakar-rally-deadliest-side-by-side-race-on-earth/
For more stories, reviews, and first-looks check out https://www.utvdriver.com/
Want to see even more shenanigans from the UTV Driver team? Give us a like and follow:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/UTVdriver/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/utvdrivermagazine/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/utvdriver/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@utvdriver
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SportsTranscript
00:00 32 competitors, 14 journalists, 4 children, and the man who created the race have all died at the Dakar.
00:07 [typing]
00:08 [music]
00:10 [fart]
00:11 So why do people do it? Why do people compete in the Dakar Rally?
00:14 Frenchman Thierry Sabine got the idea for the race after nearly dying in the Teneri Desert.
00:19 Two days and nights lost in the desert under a sun who starts to make me lose my mind.
00:24 The total absence of a shadow started to produce a feeling of claustrophobia.
00:28 Then I decided to leave my bike, walking wearing just my socks, sucking stones to try to produce some saliva.
00:35 Then I understand my life have less value or nothing.
00:38 Two years later, the first competitors set off from Paris for the capital of Senegal.
00:43 Out of 182 starters, only 74 vehicles crossed the finish line.
00:48 They called themselves the Survivors.
00:50 This year the rally was in Saudi Arabia, pitting competitors against nearly 5,000 miles of some of the most hateful terrain on Earth.
00:58 5,000 miles! That's like driving from New York to Los Angeles and back to Indianapolis with no roads.
01:06 In a side-by-side. In a country that rubs elbows with an active war zone.
01:10 So we decided to head to Saudi Arabia with Can-Am to see what makes a seemingly sane person like Sarah Price stand toe-to-toe with the desert and say, "Fight me."
01:19 She's a former motocross star who has competed in the Baja 500, the Baja 1000, the Nora Rally,
01:26 and this year she became the first American woman to win a global rally raid stage at the Morocco Rally.
01:32 Basically anything four wheels and dirt I have pretty much raced at this point, but that has never been the Dakar Rally.
01:39 That has been the top of my bucket list for many, many, many years, and I've been trying to figure out a way to get there,
01:45 and this year, you know, I just said, "You know what? We're going."
01:47 How do you prepare yourself to attack something like that? What's the psychology like?
01:51 I can have my arm falling off and I will still finish and never give up.
01:55 Like, it's just this crazy, like, thing. I just can't let it happen.
01:59 In normal life, like, I might be a little bit ADD, kind of all over the place,
02:03 but then the moment I sit in the driver's seat, there's this, like, sense of calmness.
02:07 Like, "All right, we're here. Nothing else matters at that point. This is a one-way street. I'm focused only on this right now."
02:13 Then it's just kind of, "Okay, what's the plan? What's the step?" Okay?
02:17 You count in the fact it's probably not going to go perfect, your plan.
02:19 You just are ready for whatever's coming and just try to stay calm and think about,
02:23 "What can you do next to make this happen faster?"
02:27 You're going to conquer it no matter what. You're not giving up.
02:29 That's the pinnacle. There is nothing bigger than Dakar Rally.
02:32 I want to be there, because that is the toughest, and that is the hardest, and I want to know in my head, "I achieved it."
02:39 Sarah, thanks so much for talking to us today. We are so excited to see you in Saudi Arabia. We'll see you soon.
02:44 I am here. I have made it to Al-Ula, Saudi Arabia.
02:50 I am about to get a ride over to the bivouac. This place is incredible.
02:54 It's like Arizona had a baby with the moon. It's the best way I can describe it.
03:00 So it's now Tuesday, January 2nd. South Racing has their bivouac set up.
03:05 It's going to take a little while to get here, because shipping has been an issue, as you might imagine, from Portugal all the way to central Saudi Arabia.
03:11 Now, Sarah Price's race machine just showed up. It is looking dialed.
03:14 We are going to talk to her in a few minutes about what goes into making sure that your race rig is ready to go.
03:18 We're going to talk to her about some of the things that are different between one you might drive in Baja and one that you drive over here in Saudi Arabia.
03:24 The biggest thing is going to be the speed limiter that says you can't go above about 80 miles an hour in her class,
03:30 which means that her rig is substantially down on horsepower from one she'd be used to driving back in the States.
03:35 All right. So I'm going to take you through what the difference is between the Can-Am Maverick X3 that I race at home in America and the Can-Am X3 I'm racing here in Dakar Rally.
03:44 There's a lot of differences because we are a FIA regulated race, and that means that the vehicle has some special modifications.
03:50 The one cool thing about our class is that we are still running like stock uprights, a lot of stock components still,
03:56 which is really awesome because we can still have the Can-Am support.
03:59 We are all pretty much on the same shock setup.
04:01 So everything's light besides the chassis because the FIA is very safe.
04:06 Let me just say the chassis on these vehicles is very built to say the least.
04:11 There's a lot of extra roll bars and support to make sure that anything that comes our way, we are very safe.
04:16 So that is one thing. Our cars are safe here. Can't say it enough.
04:20 So the biggest thing that is different from our vehicles from there to here is that we have a restrictor in this car.
04:26 So that means that we are limited on power. They do take away horsepower.
04:30 And that's a way for them to regulate our class and keep the cars equal from every manufacturer, if they're turbocharged or not turbocharged.
04:36 And then we also have a speed limit here. I am allowed to go 125 kph, which is just under 80 miles an hour.
04:43 And so it's very difficult. I don't have a speedo that keeps it under that.
04:47 So I have to modulate it and pay attention to that the entire time, or that can mean a penalty for me.
04:52 Having less power is not necessarily easier by any means, because when it comes to obstacles in front of you, like a big dune, you have to think ahead.
05:01 And then that means that your navigation gets messed up because you aren't able to take a straight shot.
05:05 So without having the power on our side, we have to be better navigators, better racers, and we have to think ahead and be prepared for that.
05:12 I would say the best thing about the FIA legal chassis would be the safety component of it.
05:17 For me as a racer, obviously, we think about weight to power, right?
05:20 You want it to be as light as possible. It's not necessarily the lightest vehicle, and it's not the lightest chassis.
05:25 But it's stout, it's what makes it to the end, and then it's what passes tech, and it's what's legal.
05:30 It's also safe. So we have to be okay with it.
05:34 This is the day where the drivers get to see that their machine is ready to rock for the race.
05:38 They get one lap of a course out here in the desert just to see that everything's ship-shaped, put the gas on the floor for the first time, feel their suspension setup, make sure everything is dialed.
05:46 But as far as practice goes, this is it for them. They do not get any more time than this shakedown.
05:52 So effectively, the prologue stage on Friday makes a second practice attempt.
05:56 That sets the grid for Saturday's first stage, and after that, they're gone.
06:00 The short practice turned up the pressure for Price and her team.
06:03 The shakedown revealed an army of small problems, the kind you would expect from a machine that just hours before was a pile of parts.
06:11 But South Racing prides itself on work ethic and thrives under pressure.
06:16 A small army of mechanics set to work, turning wrenches until the wee hours of the morning to get the X3 into fighting shape.
06:23 By Friday morning, everything was ready for Price to do what she does best, to strap in, mat it, and kick ass.
06:32 [MUSIC]
06:45 On stage 10, Sarah Price made history by becoming the first American woman, and the third woman of any nationality, to win a stage at the Dakar Rap.
06:54 Over the course of the race, Price never dropped out of the top five in the overall ranking for the SSB class.
07:01 She spent most of the middle stages of the race comfortably in a podium position.
07:05 In the end, she came away with fourth in SSB.
07:09 Losing the podium after a pair of flat tires and a navigation error in the rally's final stages cost her too much time.
07:16 But what really matters is this.
07:19 In her first Dakar rally, Sarah Price did what legions of racers before her have failed to do.
07:25 She became one of the survivors.
07:28 Sarah, welcome home. How would you describe or rate your 2024 Dakar rally?
07:33 Boy, I would say a one out of a ten, I would say a nine.
07:37 And the only reason why I say a nine is because I didn't get that podium I so badly wanted.
07:43 On stage 11, I had an opportunity to push and get the win.
07:49 And I took that chance. I went for it.
07:54 Now I look back and I'm like, "Man, should I have done that? Or should I have not?"
07:59 And just played it safe and got a podium.
08:02 What do you do in that circumstance?
08:04 But in the moment, I'm a racer. I want to do the best I possibly can.
08:08 So I did take that chance and it worked out. Can you imagine? I won Dakar. That's insane.
08:14 That was kind of a bummer because I took myself off the podium by trying to get the win.
08:19 That was a tough pill for me to swallow.
08:22 For rally drivers, there is no simple way to prove you're the best.
08:26 But there simply is no better way to prove you're the best than to win at Dakar.
08:30 No two Dakar rallies are ever the same and there's always a new goal to reach.
08:35 And there's always an old wound to heal.
08:37 It's an adventure unlike any on earth and the thrill of coming out on top outweighs even the craziest risk.
08:44 Okay, so are you going back? I think that's the big question.
08:46 I want it so bad. I sure hope so.
08:49 I think this whole campaign was, I took a huge leap of faith on myself
08:54 and I put a lot of eggs in one basket to make a good presence there.
08:59 And I think we did. And I think people seen that I have the pace, I have the competitive side,
09:05 and I have what it takes to really make this into a successful thing for myself to race World Rally Raid
09:11 and to hopefully win Dakar one day.
09:13 After Stage 10, I think, I know we were all on Cloud 9 for you.
09:17 That is such a huge accomplishment.
09:19 Talk a little bit about being in, that's really rarefied company.
09:24 You're one of three people on earth who have done that.
09:27 So, you know, and I know Christina kind of kicked things up a notch by going and winning the whole deal.
09:33 But, you know, you and she and Yoda are still the only three women to have won a Dakar stage.
09:38 How do you process that?
09:39 Oh, it's crazy. Like that day I knew I had to make time up and I had to have a solid day.
09:44 So we were on it and we honestly, we just drove a clean day.
09:48 We ended up on top. It wasn't the goal, like wasn't to win the stage.
09:51 Like I never had that in my head to do the Dakar and win stages.
09:55 I just always was thinking of the end goal, you know, and so to get that stage win was pretty cool and really surprising.
10:01 To be the first American ever to win a stage in Dakar, that's huge.
10:05 That is amazing. And I'm so glad to put America on the map in that sense.
10:09 It was an incredible and I'm stoked that we're going down the history books for that.
10:13 But the ultimate goal is to win Dakar and be the first American female to do that.
10:17 Hopefully, you know, we have a bunch of American women that kind of start following in my footsteps.
10:21 And maybe I can help them along the way to do the same.
10:23 And then we're going to have 10 American women that have done all that.