28.12.2017 Buenos Aires – taking over the vehicles
This whole adventure started long before we picked up the cars in Buenos Aires. It started back in 1988. I was a little kid and I watched, fascinated and proud, together with my dad, as guys like Moskal and Loprais fought for the top spots of the Paris–Dakar Rally. Every year around Christmas it was one of the few windows into the world outside the communist bloc.
Then, once things loosened up and I started travelling, in 1998 it was Africa's turn and the Libyan deserts, where we again went looking for traces of the Dakar.
At the beginning of 2016 my mate Adam asked me whether I'd fancy going training in the Sahara with the leading Czech Dakar team. Well, of course I fancied it!
Except that in Tunisia, where Martin Macík's team has been going to train for years, armed civil unrest broke out right at that moment, so the already paid-for trip never happened.
We met up with Martin Macík Sr. at his place in Sedlčany and Martin, with his typical humour, says – lads, I don't feel like giving you the money back. If you chip in a bit more, I'll take you straight to the Dakar. Well, holy crap! We're in!
Martin prepared a press support vehicle for us, one that has to meet the same specifications as the race cars and can therefore go out on the route. And the rest was up to us. Get to the bivouac every day, where the next stage starts. Either along the race route, or by shortcut on the road.
There were three of us:
Me, the Big Shock Racing team photographer, whose job was to deliver 10 good photos a day, which the team then used in the media. Since a few of them even ended up printed in national dailies like MF Dnes, I guess it mostly worked out.
Adam – chief navigator. He was brilliant at getting us to spots on the route that were photogenic. And that's no joke at all. The map of the route is secret, the crews (and us press f*ckers too) only get the itinerary, i.e. at which kilometre to turn where. Which is useless if you're not driving the whole route. And we're not, because we've got neither the car nor the experience for that, so we have to find shortcuts in order to meet (and photograph) the field more than once a day.
Jiřík – main driver, who can not only drive at any speed and in any terrain, but on top of that can drive 16 hours a day. And that was often needed.
The roles weren't fixed, we swapped as needed. The Dakar means covering 8 thousand km in 12 days, and that in tough terrain and on beaten-up dirt tracks. It was normal to set off at seven in the morning and arrive at the next bivouac at two in the morning.
Dakar 2017 had one big drawback. Our vehicles were shipped from France to the port in Buenos Aires, but the start was in Asunción, Paraguay. That's 1400 km!! So the first day and night and day was nothing but the transfer to the start.
29.12.2006 - Day two – Asunción, Paraguay
Asunción was picked as the start venue purely and simply so that the organisers could brag to the sponsors that this year the Dakar would run through three South American countries. Paraguay has no suitable terrain and 99% of the route would go through Argentina and Bolivia.
We spent the first two days shuttling between the bivouac and the administration building, where the French red tape was running wild. Every Dakar participant, from the competitors to the mechanics, managers and journalists, has to collect – I think – 12 stamps from the organisers in a giant building. Passport check, proof of the entry fee being paid (an unbelievable 8 thousand EUR/person), vaccinations, a doctor's examination, driving licence, press card, shoe size and so on.
30.12. 2016 Day three – Getting ready for scrutineering
As part of the fee we paid, each car was issued two devices. A GPS and an Iritrak. One of them tells us where to go, but only if we're on the route and only in the form of arrows… The other reports our position to the organisers, including speed, impacts and the vehicle's position relative to the ground. It's mainly a safety thing. If we crash, roll onto the roof etc., the organisers send a helicopter for us and it takes us to the nearest French field hospital – they have two or three of them. One is always being built up at the next stage, one is being moved and one is operating.
The bivouac was separated from the scrutineering building by the city centre, where the main street was closed, hence chaos and traffic jams.
The bivouac is a place where the organisers provide the basic necessities for the participants. The number of competitors, mechanics, managers, cooks, physiotherapists and press f*ckers is about 2–3 thousand people! That's why at every stage you need to find a suitable area where a canteen, toilets, showers, a field hospital and a press tent get set up, and each team builds its own base there. For example, apart from the race truck and Lukáš Kvapil's single bike, Martin Macík's race team has one more truck as living quarters, one as a mobile workshop and depot with 2000 litres of diesel, 2 support Toyota Hiluxes and one minibike for getting around the bivouac. The Kamaz team, for instance, has something like 15 support trucks!
On the first day we drove onto a beautiful mown green meadow. Then it rained properly and the beautiful meadow turned into a tank proving ground, see the photos.
In the evening the great showman Martin Kolomý, aka Kolomajz, dropped by. He brought a package of his famous home-smoked sausages, had a few drinks with us and we had a lovely chat. It dawned on me that at the Dakar everyone is one big gang and as long as it's not about the standings, people happily reminisce about the old days and knock back slivovice.
31.12.2016 Day four – Scrutineering
Scrutineering is a pretty serious step. The organisers do a final inspection of the vehicles and check whether they meet all the strict regulations. With the trucks it's, for example, the minimum weight, which has to be 8 tonnes. It's no problem to make a truck much lighter, so it gets weighted up, for instance, by carrying heavy spare parts along (like a diff J)
That it's no joke could be confirmed, for example, by Pepa Macháček, five-time winner of the quad category (it has to be said that he won at a time when it was a brand new category with few entries, and sometimes he was also the only one who made it to the finish). Once at scrutineering the organisers told Pepa that his quad didn't meet the requirements and DIDN'T LET him race! You prepare for the Dakar all year, the whole season costs several million, and telling him this the day before the start is really rotten.
Well, luckily everything went through without trouble for us, even though the front axle was a few kilos short.
1.1.2017 Day five – Podium
The podium is a big show for the spectators and the press. The whole field is herded one by one onto a wooden ramp, the crew shakes hands with the head organiser, gets photographed and drives on. The whole thing takes about 14 hours…
2.1.2017 - Day six – Stage 1, Asunción, Paraguay to Resistencia, Argentina
The first stage was quite a drama, mainly for the three of us, total rookies. We found out how hard it is to find the route when you don't have its map. And once you do find it, because the dust behind the cars rises so high that you can see it 3 km away, you also have to find a way to get to it. The whole area around the route is lined with the army so that the millions of local spectators don't climb in at unsuitable places.
In the end we managed to find one spot, and on the first attempt the photos were quite decent. The only thing I found odd was that Martin Macík Jr. went through our corner in the biggest slide of them all. I took it as a big show-off move, simply driving sideways, doors first J.
Rubbish. The front axle engagement hadn't worked for him the whole stage and he was driving on the rear only. Hence the slide.
So after the stage finished, taking things apart late into the night. It turned out that on the ship a tiny pin had rusted up – the one that's controlled hydraulically and electrically from the cab and engages the front axle.
In the evening the organisers grilled piles of steaks on huge grates. There were enough of them for each of us to have two or three. If you haven't yet had an Argentinian steak in Argentina (or Paraguay, who cares!), then you don't yet know what a steak is. Really.
