dakar 2012

Wow, Chile. Shows you how out of touch I am, thought Paris Dakar was still Paris Dakar.

If Robbie continues to risk the farm, sounds like he can catch the Mini. Heard the other Hummer is gone.

 

What a bunch of crap the officiating is this year. Peterhansel hits a biker, no penalty. They give Robbie Gordon the wrong roadbook, their fault, costing him time, but don't give any back to him.

Despres falls in the mud on the course, Marc Coma misses it, so they gift a huge chunk of time back to Despres because the puddle he fell into wasn't on the route notes.

Imagine that, the french driver and french biker getting preferential treatment from the french officials.

It's a load of merde.

 

I've caught bits and pieces here and there.

IIRC a motorcyclist died early on...RIP.

I can probably answer this with a Google or two but why is Gordon running Hummers and who is the cash supporting it, certainly not GM, right???

Speaking of which, Gordon had to tow his teammate in one stage I believe?

 

Yeah, biker died on the first stage.

Robbie has run "Hummers" for 5 years now. hey really aren't Hummers at all, but purpose built prototypes. I don;t know exactly who bank rolled his run. I know Quatar bankrolled his team mate Nasser's run.

Yeah, Robbie had to tow Nasser Al Atiyah (sp?) more than once I think. Nasser is gone now, after todays stage. Broke three alternator belts and he felt that, with Monte Carlo coming up (he also runs in the WRC) and his training for the Olympics (hes also a champion skeet shooter), his time could be better spent somewhere else.

Nasser will be back next year, rumored to be with Citroen.

Robbie is still in the rally, but currently racing under appeal. He was tossed out of the Rally tuesday night after inspectors felt that he had made modifications to his air intake system to give more performance to his Hummer.

Robbie claims it's the same system they've been running for 5 years, so he appealed. Sadly we won't know the result of the appeal for another month, because it has to go before the FIA in Paris. So potentially, Robbie could win the rally and then be disqualified in February.

 

Thanks for the recap! As Dakar Turns...

Just surprised they didn't label them as something else so they could get at least some support (i.e. $$$) from a manufacturer.

 

Tell me about it. But the drama is part of the deal, especially when they're racing for two weeks straight.

 

Robby Gordon must be one of the most under rated
drivers ever having done events like Dakar, the ROC,
CART, NASCAR, Baja 1000 and sports cars.

One particular Saturday morning, Nils Finderup, Tom
Kristensen's PR manager, called me from the ROC
event at the Canary Islands which must have been
1999 or 2000.

Nils, with very serious Danish accent asked, "Who is this
Robby Gordon guy anyway?". I laughed and told him about
Gordon's well-known exploits in the U.S. which was unknown
to the Europeans at the time and why did he want to know.

Nils explained that the night before the first round of the
ROC that Gordon was the life of the party in the hotel bar
confounding the Europeans by "getting totally pissed" (drunk)
then going out the next morning and setting the fastest
time of the day in the buggies.

Then, he went out in his quarter million dollar buggy
in the next round where he was on pace to set an even
faster time when the rolled the buggy which caught fire
and burned to the ground.

The Europeans loved it!

BHW

 

I agree that he is well rounded, but he is not a champion.
Like a jack of all trades, but master of none.
But I do like him, if for no other reason than he's done the Indy 500 and Coke 600 in the same day!

 

Robby lost a CV boot on the Hummer today, Stage 11, and the fine volcanic dust of Peru chewed the CV up, costing Robby over an hour and taking him out of contention.

 

Yes, not too many with as a diverse driving background
as Gordon these days.

Perhaps not a champion but he's won his share of big
events. He must have been among the winning teams
when Roush was dominating IMSA GTO at the 24 Hours
of Daytona.

In reports about Dakar though, they're referring to Gordon
as "ex-NASCAR driver". He's not coming back in 2012?

There definately seems to be selective enforcement of
rules at Dakar. But, that's nothing new in this event.

BHW

 

Gordon's DQ was totally nuts. The notion that he was bleeding air from the tire inflation system to give the engine extra performance is the kind of thing you'd come up with if you can't do math.

Do the officials have any idea how much air a big Hummer engine sucks in every second?

Using spare tire pressure as "boost" would suck the tires flat in an instant.


And then Robby plugged the system and spanked the Minis by a huge margin on Stage 12.

The Mini's turbo diesel might do well in the thin air, and they're probably more economical. But when it comes to speed ....

... "there's no replacement for displacement."


You might argue that the frogs (Peterhansel, FIA) did a psych-out on Robby, as he's been driving angry, and made mistakes on stages 11 and 13.

But he proved his point. The Hummer is fast.


But it's been obvious for some time that the FIA has become Chauvinistic.

The big names in rally are Scooby and Mitsu ---- but you don't see them in WRC.
The French driver in the French car has cruised to the last seven WRC titles, with no serious competition.

Notice that Toyota and Honda are gone from F1, too.

And look at this year's "Dakar" -- bikes: Dupres on KTM, cars: Peterhansel in the BMW "mini".
And even the Dutch are beating the previously dominant Kamaz's in trucks.

Donnez-moi une break.

 

The Hummers cost each other time covering each other. It was obvious early that they needed a third team car -- the support car that most teams have.

That goes back to Hummer not being a factory team.
It looks like Nassar Al Attiyah got funding from Qatar for his entry, while "Speed" energy drink seems to be the team sponsor.
They just might not have had the budget for a third team car.
There was a point where they couldn't even get their spares in through customs for one of the countries.

I think they went out expecting Nassar to fight for the wins with Robbie being the support car, but Robbie wound up doing better in the early stages.

 

Some cool pics: http://thethrottle.thechive.com/2012/01/23/2012-dakar-rally-in-high-res-35-hq-photos/

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