WHO WILL CHALLENGE RACE TOUAREGS?

+ Click to Enlarge IT'S NOT ALL SAND DUNES: South African Giniel de Villiers (VW Race Touareg) on his way to winning the 2009 Dakar rally.

November 20, 2009

The 31st Dakar rally (it would have been 32 had 2008 not been cancelled) will start on New Year's Day 2010, from Buenos Aires in Argentina, the second running of "the world's toughest motor race" in South America.

More than 500 motorcycles, quads, cars and trucks will tackle a 9000km route through Argentina and Chile, over the Andes mountains and back again, with organisers promising everything from desert dunes to tropical mud and alpine snow.

South Africa's own Giniel de Villiers won the 2009 rally – also in South America – for VW at the wheel of a Race Touareg. The team has already entitled its 2010 effort Project Title Defence and entered five of the diesel-powered Blue Meanies.

The big question, however, is the source of their main challenge. Long-dominant Mitsubishi announced its withdrawal from cross-country rallying earlier in 2009, citing the world economic downturn, after 26 Dakar entries and 12 wins, seven of them in a row.

Perhaps VW's biggest threat, if not from the gruelling conditions, could come from American Robbie Gordon – third overall in 2008 - who will again enter his monstrous V8 Hummer, this time with an all-carbon fibre body.

There will also be the usual selection of very fast Schlesser buggies and the X-Raid team of BMW X3's, one of them in the hands of ex-Mitsubishi driver Stephane Peterhansel who has won the Dakar six times on a motorcycle and four times in a car.

South Africa will again be well represented, not only by De Villiers but also by three SA-built Nissan Navara bakkies similar to those that finished fourth and fifth in 2009.

Off-road legend Alfie Cox will drive one in this his 10th Dakar outing (seven on motorcycles), another will be in the hands of Polish National champion Krzysztof Holowczyc (fifth in the same bakkie in 2009) and a third will have a Russian driver who is yet to be named.