The Dakar Rally is an unparalleled spectacle of elite off-road driving. Parking lots of the spectator areas are unsupervised clusterfucks full of jabronis who couldn't tell you where their drive wheels are, but reckon they can keep up with Robby Gordon soon as they seem him fly by. Hilarity ensues.
All these pics are from a sandy parking pit at Stage 8 of the race ending just outside Iquique, Chile. With the bivouac fairly close to a major city, this spectator area was particularly packed with goofballs who figured their Jeep Compass would have no trouble getting up a dune if that 6WD Kamaz managed to make it.
Three (four?) fails in one picture! Including ours.
The sand was way soft. Like; hard to walk in soft. We didn't even bother trying to go deep with the SsangYong. Of course we had to stop snickering long enough to convince our Argentinian fixer Sasha he'd get it done in the 2WD 2.2 liter bald-tire'd Ranger (Sasha took it in stride. The Ranger, not so much.)
Seemed pretty well everybody has the same issue; too much tire pressure, too much weight. If they got past that, they sunk when they ran out of power.
Somebody bailed in a hurry.
What the actual fuck was this dude thinking trying to drive straight over that hump in that truck?
Never gonna happen, man. Let your tires down!
"Climb the hill on an angle" they said. At least it looks like somebody found the tire valve.
Welp.
Those poor wheel bearings.
You again?! The Frontier's a perfectly good truck, but somebody needs to get this jackoffosaur out of the driver's seat.
This SsangYong Rexton is rocking one-wheel drive, just sittin' on the differential. These people got stuck about ten times. Air down your tires.
"I knew we should have gone home with that guy in the Land Cruiser."
Stickers don't make you faster, bro. This FJ would have been fine dropping about 20 PSI from his tires. Are you seeing a theme here?
Unfortunately for this overheated Mitsubishi, that security vehicle is rushing to get a better vantage point of the race not help him out. Cool picture though, right?
Reckon she's scanning the crowd for a dude with a working rig? Sweet looking Samurai, though.
Images by the author