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(Top) Herbert Auriol rode fast and consistently for 20 days, taking the motorcycle win for himself and BMW. (Above left) Two of the BMW team bikes.
Gas tanks run as large as 12 gallons. (Above right) Patrick Drobecq finished second overall for Honda.
Paris to Dakar Rally
The ultimate dirt ride
By Patrick Behar
PARIS, FRANCE/DAKAR, SENEGAL, JAN. 1-21
Europeans are known to do things differently,
and the French are among the most' incongruous of them all. They really try to do
things differently, and the fifth Paris to Dakar
.16
Rally is a perfect example ofthe
ki d f d
hevwill
In 0 a venture t ey wi put
together.
Picture a 20-day race through
part o~ the Sahara. desert in Algeria
and Niger, the Afncan bushland of
Upper Volta and Ivory Coast, and the
western desert of Mauritania before
reaching Dakar, the capital of Sene-
6500 miles!
gal. It is not a Hollywood super production , but a rally (we'd call it a
desert race here), 6500 miles long and
20 days of all kinds of terrain.
Some parts are race staged, where
the rider ha s to go as fast as he or she
can on a "short" portion, 300-400
miles, where your time is calculated.
Then riders have what they call "Iiasons" where they had so many hours
to cover a distance but where time .
was not calculated,
There are four classes: 125, 250cc,
Open and sidecars. No 125s or 250s
would finish the race , only Open
bikes and one sidecar (based on a GS
1100 Suzuki) reached Dakar. Every
night the race was stopped and the
factory teams regrouped. They included BMW with eventual winner
Hubert Auriol (he raced the Baja 1000
on several occasions) and former I25cc
MX World Champ Gaston Rahieron
BMW 980s based on the GS 800, but
with twin shocks and engines prepared by German ISDT champ Herbert Scheck. Rahier showed them
how good he was on such a big bike
by winning the first two stages of the
rally. Auriol, helped by his two other
teammates in the BMW camp, managed to win his second Paris to Dakar.