By: IOL Motoring Staff
Midrand - Toyota SA has announced a three-car entry for the 2016 Dakar Rally, to be run from 2-16 January in Argentina and Bolivia.
The 'works' entries are based on the all-new 2016 Hilux bakkie - which won't even be released in South Africa until February - and represent the first completely new departure for Hallspeed in Midrand (which develops and builds Toyota's off-road racing bakkies) since the inception of the Toyota SA Dakar team five years ago.
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Like most Dakar Rally entries, they're actually purpose built off-road racing vehicles with tubular chassis and carbon-fibre replica body panels.
Sitting well back between the frame rails of each, to keep its weight as central as possible, is a new Lexus RC-F V8 engine - the most powerful 2UR-series engine yet, with a wider degree of cam timing and electric inlet control, more efficient combustion and reduced internal friction.
However, Dakar Rally rules impose a restrictor plate on the inlet to limit airflow and thus peak power. Glyn Hall has developed the inlet manifold, engine mapping and exhaust system to get the most out of the engine within those parameters without compromising reliability.
It uses a combination of direct and port fuel-injection to generate 'about 285kW' and more than 600Nm - most of which is on tap from as low as 2000rpm to give it the grunt it need for the notorious Atacama dunes.
The 2016 Dakar Hilux also has a new gearbox, well-tested in the 2015 SA cross country series, with a bigger, more durable centre differential - which is actually lighter than the one it replaces, thanks to clever design and exotic materials. The traditional wiring harness has also given way to lighter, more flexible Controller Area Network electronic power distribution system.
The proven 2015 Dakar Hilux suspension set-up has largely carried over to the new version, but has been continuously developed throughout the year, with major improvements for rally-type stages.
THE CREWS
The race, often billed as the toughest motorsport event in the world, will see the three South African-built bakkies competing under the new team name of Toyota Gazoo Racing SA.
Gazoo was the name the name of a popular and well-known Japanese tuning house and grassroots motorsport promoter that, as of 2015, has become part of the Toyota monolith as the company's official 'racing brand'.
The Hiluxes will be crewed by Dakar veteran Giniel de Villiers and his German navigator Dirk von Zitzewitz, SA cross-country champions Leeroy Poulter and navigator Rob Howie, and Saudi racer Yazeed Al Rajhi, with German navigator Timo Gottschalk.
De Villiers and Von Zitzewitz will be in the lead car, carrying race number 301. They've been together since 2007 and won the Dakar outright in a Volkswagen Touareg in 2009. Since moving to Toyota in 2012, they've finished third, second, fourth and second in consecutive Dakar Rallies.
Wearing race number 316 in the second Hilux will be newly crowned SA cross-country champions Leeroy Poulter and navigator Rob Howie. They've done two previous Dakars together, and in 2015 they won all but one round of the South African cross-country series.
Saudi rally driver Yazeed Al Rajhi - race number 305 - has posted a number of podium finishes in the WRC2 class of the World Rally Championship. He teamed up with German Timo Gottschalk - who had previously navigated for Nasser Al-Attiyah and Carlos Sainz - to enter an SA-built 'customer' Toyota Hilux in the 2015 Dakar, where they rattled a lot of cages by running as high as third overall before a small technical gremlin took them out of the running.
THE CHALLENGE
The 2016 Dakar Rally will start in Buenos Aires on 2 January, over a route of 13 stages stretching northwest into the Andes and the high plains of the Bolivian altiplano, before looping south again, back into Argentina to finish in the city of Rosario on 16 January.
And this is how it they'll roll:
31 December: Administrative and technical checks - Buenos Aires
1 January: Administrative and technical checks - Buenos Aires
2 January: Start podium in Buenos Aires and Prologue
3 January: Stage 1 - Buenos Aires to Villa Carlos Paz
4 January: Stage 2 - Paz to Termas de Río Hondo
5 January: Stage 3 - Termas de Río Hondo to Jujuy
6 January: Stage 4 - Jujuy to Jujuy
7 January: Stage 5 - Jujuy to Uyuni, Bolivia
8 January: Stage 6 - Uyuni to Uyuni, Bolivia
9 January: Stage 7 - Uyuni to Salta, Argentina
10 January: Rest day in Salta
11 January: Stage 8 - Salta to Belén
12 January: Stage 9 - Belén to Belén
13 January: Stage 10 - Belén to La Rioja
14 January: Stage 11- La Rioja to San Juan
15 January: Stage 12- San Juan to Villa Carlos Paz
16 January: Stage 13 - Villa Carlos Paz to Rosario
THE HISTORY
The Dakar Rally started in 1977 when Frenchman Thierry Sabine got lost in the Ténéré Desert while competing in the Abidjan-Nice Rally. By the following year the Paris-Dakar was born, with 182 entries on two and four wheels - the truck category came later, when the crews of the support vehicles began informally racing from one bivouack to the next.
While the start shifted from one southern European city to another (mostly to escape Paris' horrendous midwinter weather) all the early Dakar Rallies ended on the shoes of the South Atlantic in the Senegalese capital - with the exception of the ambitious 1992 Paris - Le Cap, which took competitors all the way to Cape Town.
Terrorist threats forced the cancellation of the 2008 from Lisbon to Dakar; the rally wound up looking for a new home, and found it in South America, where the first 'modern Dakar' in 2009 was won by Giniel de Villiers and Dirk von Zitzewitz.
The Dakar Rally requires such unparalleled infrastructure that armies the world over send their logistics staff to learn how it's done.
The overnight bivouack varies between three and five square kilometres in area, depending on the location, and includes race headquarters, a medical centre, media facilities and TV studios, rest areas with showers and toilets, car-wash facilities and an all-night restaurant that serves as many as 10 000 hot meals a day.
All of which gets packed up, moved several hundred kilometres in a fleet of about thirty military-type transport aircraft and set up again - every day!
But even that pales into insignificance beside the sheer scale of the adventure - two weeks of flat-out racing over almost 10 000km of the toughest terrain on the planet.
Less than half of the nearly 500 hopefuls who roar out of Buenos Aires on 2 January will reach Rosario. Those who've done it say it changes you, and they'll admit that it's addictive, which is why so many come back year after year.\
FOLLOW THE DAKAR
In addition to the daily TV broadcasts on SuperSport, you can stay up to date with the race on the Dakar Rally website. The rally also has its own app for both iOS and Android devices, which can be downloaded free of charge from either iTunes or the Google Play Store
Follow the Hiluxes on the Toyota Motorsport website , where information on the team will be updated daily, on Twitter (blow-by-blow updates on the team throughout the race) and Facebook , for daily posts on the fortunes of the crews throughout the race.
Hashtags to look out for:
#toyotaSAracing - Toyota-specific updates
#gazooracingSA - All team-related updates
#dakar2016SA - General updates on South Africans taking part in Dakar 2016
Twitter Handles include:
@therealginiel - Giniel de Villiers
@leeroypoulter - Leeroy Poulter
@YazeedRacing - Yazeed Al Rajhi
@rallyedakar - Dirk von Zitzewitz
@robhowie72 - Rob Howie
@dakar - Dakar Rally
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