Rally Raid
How to decode a Dakar Rally roadbook
If you want to survive the iconic Dakar Rally, the infamous roadbook is your best friend. Here's how to decipher this mystifying manual – just be thankful you don’t have to figure it out at 140kph.
Argentina, day 10 of the 2018 Dakar Rally. A group of six motorbikes is flying through the desert, a sandy plain, criss-crossed by faint, dried-up riverbeds. One member of our group feels uncomfortable.
Pro rally biker Matthias Walkner has a problem: The others are going too fast. He wonders how the hell could they be navigating correctly and processing tons of information accurately without slowing down from speeds topping 140kph? The Austrian racer eases off the throttle and falls behind.
A Dakar Rally rider in Peru, 2019.
© Picturedesk.com
It’s a principle that KTM team boss and navigation expert Jordi Viladoms instilled in him when he made the transition from motocross to rally, one that he would never betray under any circumstances. It’s law in Walkner’s head now: Never, ever just follow someone else’s tracks. Always navigate yourself!
Roadbook entry no. 349 for that day finally came. Walkner explains: “The kilometres in the roadbook didn’t line up perfectly with the odometer and in situations like that, your feelings or instincts or whatever you want to call it come into play. The tracks ahead of me led into a sandy crater but the roadbook indicated that I should keep to the right. But was that the right spot in this maze?
Walkner must process hundreds of roadbook entries faultlessly each day.
© Marcin Kin
"Presumably both RFOs [rules for organisers] would realign soon anyway, I thought, and so I kept to the right just in case. All tracks disappeared over the next few kilometres. Was I right or wrong? I didn’t know.
"Nor was the compass bearing that much use. From kilometre 350 to 368, the next spot for which there was any info in the roadbook, I had an eternity to mull over whether I had been the idiot or if I was the only one who’d gone the right way.”
Now rally raid fans know how that played out. Walkner was right, gaining 50 meaningful minutes that day and going on to win the Dakar Rally.
An odometer and compass; the race roadbook; and the organizer’s GPS.
© Flavien Duhamel / Red Bull Content Pool
Doing the Dakar on a motorbike is as much of a mental challenge as it is physical. All the riders have is a scroll of paper with instructions on it. A racer will only make it to the finish line if he or she can follow them to the letter.
Here’s a summary of how it works.
The left-hand column of each entry shows distances, both absolute and in relation to the last point of reference. But since the riders rarely get to go in a perfectly straight line, they constantly have to recalibrate their odometers.
The central column has pictograms that depict the terrain and the route as well as the compass bearing. To understand these sections, the riders must memorise a special alphabet composed of more than 100 pictograms. The right-hand column has verbal prompts where applicable, but just so that things don’t seem too straightforward, they’re abbreviations of French words.
Below you will find an example of instructions from a Dakar Rally roadbook, provided by the Amaury Sport Organisation (ASO), featuring five sections running from top to bottom. Below that, we've decoded each section.
The roadbook, decoded
© Amaury Sport Organisation
- At kilometre 17.78, 530m since the last entry, look out for hidden checkpoint C [which would bring at least a 15-minute penalty if missed]. Caution! Potential danger area when you take a left to go offroad and into the dunes. [The text at right – HP DS DN – is an abbreviation of the French phrase hors piste dans dunes.] Compass bearing 268°.
- At kilometre 18.60, 820m since the last entry, you come off Route L3 and take a gentle right into the dunes, where the road comes to an end. Compass bearing 180°, so due south.
- Beware. At kilometre 18.94, 340m since the last entry, you have to hit a security checkpoint bang on. Maximum [three-exclamation-mark] alert!!! When you come out of the dunes [‘END DN’], a barely visible ditch is lying in wait on a bad track. [MVS is an abbreviation of the French word mauvais.] Once you’re beyond that, you carry on into a gentle right turn at a bearing of about 80°.
- At kilometre 21.1, 2.16km since the previous entry, you go downhill through dunes interspersed with shrubs and a river that’s 300m wide. Then you have to come off road bearing right into a 50m-wide wadi [a dried-up riverbed, spelled oued in French], compass heading averaging 5°.
- At kilometre 21.33, 230m since the last entry, turn right at the crest of the hill onto a highly visible marked track, alongside of which other tracks run in parallel. [ET P // is roadbook shorthand for et piste parallel – ”and parallel track” in French.]
Anyone at the top level of the sport can make a motorbike go fast. The thing that makes the difference is the mental capacity left over for navigation
The rider’s job isn’t solely to decipher and apply the information faultlessly as they ride; they also needs to have half an eye on the next entry to keep ahead of the game.
Viladoms explains: “You can compare it to learning a new language. If you really want to master navigation, you have to practise, practise again and keep on practising. Anyone at the top level of the sport can make a motorbike go fast. The thing that makes the difference is the mental capacity left over for navigation.”
Matthias Walkner couldn’t have said it better himself.
