Nasser Al-Attiyah became the first Arab driver to win the Dakar Rally after finishing the 2011 event in Argentina almost 50 minutes ahead of his closest rival.
The win for Al-Attiyah in the Car class came on his sixth attempt at the title, so he's well placed to understanding how gruelling the Dakar rally experience can be.
Since it began in 1979, the Dakar Rally (formerly known as the Paris-Dakar Rally) has established itself as a major international event with three main competitive classes: Motorbikes, Cars and Trucks. Given that the race was the brainchild of Thierry Sabine, a motorbike rider who got lost in the Libyan desert during the 1977 Abidjan-Nice Rally and vowed to share his experience of the inhospitable landscape with others, it is hardly surprising that, even with its now altered route, the Dakar rally is still regarded as the most challenging off-road driving event on the planet.
The classic Paris-Dakar Rally, as its name suggests, started in Paris and finished in Dakar, Senegal. Numerous factors have caused the course, start point and destination to change on a near annual basis but the largest shakeup of the event came after the 2008 race was cancelled due to the high risk of terrorist attacks in Mauritania. As the political instability in northwest Africa continued, in 2009 the Dakar Rally jumped across the Atlantic to South America, with the course running to and from Buenos Aires via Valparaiso.
This year's event was staged in Argentina and Chile, starting and finishing in Buenos Aires via Arica. Consisting of 13 stages and covering over 9,500km, the rally took competitors through a land of contrasts, from the lowlands of Argentina, to the sand and dunes of the Atacama Desert and on to the high plateaux of the Andes Cordillera.
A total of 355 entries started the rally, including 186 in the Bike category, 39 in the Quads, 57 in the Cars category (teams of two) and 73 entries into the trucks class (teams of 2-3 drivers). As a mark of just how tough the challenge is, it's worth noting that the list of withdrawals from the rally is not much shorter than the list of initial entrants. 68 competitors in the Bikes class failed to complete all stages of the rally, as well as 16 from the Quad Bike riders, 16 Car teams and 22 Truck teams.
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