Written by admin on February 4, 2007 in News - Comments Off on Lisboa Dakar 2007 Race Report
First of all I want to thank Robby Gordon and everyone from Team Gordon for giving me the opportunity to compete in the infamous Dakar Rally. It was a pleasure working with the team and I congratulate everyone in the group on their accomplishments. To an off road racer like me, this was a fulfillment of a dream, my Indy 500! Most people in the USA don’t know that much about The Dakar Rally. This race is the most difficult and demanding auto race in the world. It’s known worldwide, on a scale comparable to the World Cup Soccer Final.
Please read on for my overview of the race from one of the co-rider seats of truck #556.
We arrived in Lisbon, Portugal on Tuesday, January 2nd to clear cool skies. Shortly after checking into our hotel it was time to get to work. We set up shop right on the street corner in front of the hotel with the 4×4 and 6×6 service trucks. These trucks are both equipped with all the parts, supplies and tools we would need for all of the maintenance and repairs that would take place prior to and during the rally. The manifest list of inventory is quite impressive and includes everything from soup to nuts, literally. We had enough spare parts and pieces to rebuild two Hummer H3 racecars and the “people” to make it happen! These two trucks also carried all of our camping gear along with all of our personal clothing bags and snack food items etc…
My job on the team was to be team manager of the T4 race support truck and it was very exciting for me when our German made MAN racetruck showed up late that afternoon. Robby purchased the truck from Philippe Jacquot of France and it got delivered to us, right to our hotel. Reality set in quick for me and teammates, Tom Geviss and Paul Mischel. The reality was that we had only two days to prepare the truck to fire off the starting line of the Dakar rally. In general the truck got delivered to us in fine shape but it definitely needed some attention and fine tuning. It also needed to be outfitted with all the equipment, parts and supplies we would need to support the H3 racecar during the race if needed. Supporting the Hummer was our sole purpose of being in the race.
There are three main groups of vehicles that enter the Dakar Rally. There are Motorcycles, Cars and Trucks. The top Moto and Car teams enter a truck or trucks in the truck race as “fast assistance”. These assistance trucks are bringing up the rear on each days stage as a sweeper car for their team and main race vehicle. In the truck class itself approximately 30% of the trucks entered are true race trucks with state of the art everything. These trucks are going for stage and overall wins and do not carry anything but what they need to win the race. The other 70% are entered in the class as fast assistance (parts wagons), we being one of them.
On Wednesday we all moved to a car dealership thirty minutes outside of town and we used this location as a workshop for the next two and a half days. It was great having the support of the dealership along with it parts department etc… We also got very lucky because there was a home center type business right next door. This came in very handy for all the last minute items we needed. We worked long hours over these two days and got much work done.
Friday came quickly and was the day of our scrutineering appointment. Fortunately we had an afternoon appointment which gave us the opportunity to work for a few hours before heading across town. We arrived at our appointment right on time and we all went through the registration process which is very thorough. Luckily for us Philippe was there to help us and it was great to see him operate. Being a veteran of the rally, he knew all the little tricks that helped grease the wheels including pinching one of the girls on the backside! After all the paperwork and orientation was done we rolled the Hummer and T4 through technical inspection with no problems. After this we put both vehicles in Parc Ferme (impound) and that’s where they would stay until the start of the race the next morning.
When we showed up Saturday morning for the start there were thousands of people lining the streets. It was a great feeling firing off the starting line of the biggest race in the world. That feeling went away quickly for me about 5 kms and 10 minutes out of town, when we “almost” missed our first major turn on the freeway. I/we got a little caught up in the moment not paying attention and from that point forward we were back to all business. Actually I feel lucky we got a very early wake up call! The first stage took place outside of town in an area that had many pine trees and sand of all things. It was definitely not good terrain for our truck because it had many whooped roads comparable to San Felipe but only at about 30% of the size. We got through the first stage clean however in 44th place out of 86 starters.
Stage two was canceled for the trucks because the ASO felt that the track was too narrow for them. Also this was the night we were to get on the ferry to cross the Mediterranean for Morocco and it was important to get all the vehicles to the dock timely. From Portimao we were on liaison only to Malaga and the ferry boats. The ferry ride gave us new guys a chance to be around the rest of the truck teams face to face. It was great to meet a few people including Duane Voogt from the BMW team. Duane is from a South African off road racing family and has been to Mexico for the Baja 1000.
When we woke up the next morning we were in a different world and the African Continent. After being in Europe for a week it was quite a shock but very interesting. The start of stage three was 205 kms away in the Atlas Mountains. The stage started in a very steep grade in the mountains and once we got up on top we were in the high desert. Unfortunately right on the backside of the summit we hit a tree and broke the front windshield. Another wake up call! Other than that the first stage in Africa went very well and we finished 24th but that was using everything we had.
The following couple stages were about the same for us and we had some great racing with the other assistant’s teams in the race including KTM, BMW and VW. On stage six our luck ran out and we hit a big hole and bent a tie rod. Fortunately we had a spare and got it changed in about an hour but we lost a bunch of spots finishing 50th.
On stage seven the Monster Black Rhino started feeling a bit tired and it was getting more difficult to run with the top teams. We had pretty much used up our shocks and they started falling apart. That night we started scrambling around the bivouac for shocks or parts and there were quite a few teams willing to help out. The only problem was that we needed 14” shocks and everyone else was running 16” shocks. Not good timing for us because the marathon stages 8 and 9 were next up on our plate. These stages do not allow the main assistance vehicles to service their racecars and all repairs had to be done by the racers themselves or by their T4 racetruck (us). On stage eight our shocks went completely out and it took us 16 hours to complete the stage and not until 1:45 AM, fifteen minutes before the cut off. Robby and Andy were already asleep when we got there but fortunately for us nothing major needed to be done to Robby’s car. All we had to do in the morning was add some gear oil and put the skid pans back on. We kept dodging bullets…
Stage nine was really bad for us again with more camel grass and we got in late just before the cut off again. Our tardiness didn’t affect Robby it all because our main assistance trucks were back in action and waiting for him to arrive to a full prep. That night I talked to Robby about our situation and he got fired up about us potentially finishing and he decided to pull out all the stops to fix our shock problem. In the morning he figured the best thing to do was to have us use a set of his spare 4” shocks. That sounded really good to us and it was much appreciated. We would have to run today’s stage ten with no shocks but at least it gave us something to look forward to.
That night we got to work on the truck early and in no time Paul Mischel had some handcrafted shock mounts fabricated, things were looking up quickly. First thing in the next morning we had the rear shocks mounted ready to go. We did have to leave the fronts for the evening because we had an afternoon liaison down to Ayoun, where there is one less donkey! That night we found someone with some Olin rebuild kits and we decided in an effort to save time that we would rebuild our four best shocks and bolt them on the front.
The repairs worked perfectly and for the next few stages we cruised the truck running mid pack and we enjoyed breathing again. Also it was great to finish those stages in the daylight on our way to Dakar. We ran trouble free besides one flat over these days and we slid into Dakar in 35th position out of 86 starters.
The next day was the very short stage fifteen on the beach but it took all day with the finishing ceremony etc… It was a great feeling to hold up the American Flag at the finish line but I also had mixed emotions. Believe it or not I didn’t want it to be over! I felt like I could just keep going…
