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Spain's Dakar 'dream team': Fernando Alonso and Carlos Sainz 'dad' make history
18/01/2020
ELDER half of Spain's famous motorsport father and son team, Carlos Sainz's Dakar Rally victory is not only a superhuman feat – being one of the toughest multi-day endurance races on earth – and not only an incredible triumph at his 57 years of age, but is, unbelievably, a hat trick.
Carlos the Elder also won in 2018 when, at 55, he was then the oldest Dakar victor in history – a record he has now broken himself.
At 47, in 2010, he was the first-ever Spaniard to win the Dakar Rally – and so far, the only one.
But Formula 1 legend Fernando Alonso – whose team slot with McLaren has been filled by Sainz's son, also called Carlos Sainz – reached the podium twice, with a third place in the final stage and in the eighth, coming 13th and netting Best Rookie in his first Dakar trial ever.
What is the Dakar Rally and why is it never in Dakar?
For the likes of twice-world champion Formula 1 driver Alonso, the Dakar Rally means a total change of chip – from top-speed racing in cars designed for precisely that, risky corner-cutting and overtaking moves, all on a flat, hard, tarmac surface, they need to readjust to rough, mountainous terrain, but it's not like your traditional off-road. Sand, mud, salt flats, rocks, dense rainforest and undergrowth, and anything else a desert-like, largely-uninhabited swathe of a largely-virgin country or continent can fling at you, is grappled with and often in vehicles that were made for town-driving, motorways or street circuits.
And anyone can join in – you don't have to qualify, or ever have raced before, on or off road – in fact, with up to 80% of participants these days being amateurs, any ordinary petrolhead could find themselves battling it out in a dustbowl with Fernando Alonso and Carlos Sainz Sr.
Five categories – cars, motorcycles, lorries, quads and Side-by-Side, which are 4x4 traction vehicles similar to a pick-up truck but much smaller – mean fans of and champions in all types of motorsport can give it a whirl.
But to say it's not for the faint-hearted is rather like a patient with double pneumonia describing his condition with a very British, “not feeling too bright today, actually.”
Inhospitable territory, extreme temperatures – sometimes reaching well over 50ºC by day, with no shelter and relentless sunlight, and dropping into minus figures overnight – mean you and your co-driver literally have your lives in each others' hands.
And lives have been lost. Six days ago, experienced endurance motorcycle racer, 2013 world champion in rally-cross and second-placed rider in the 2015 Dakar, Paulo Gonçalves – from the aptly-named Team Hero – suffered a dramatic crash in the seventh stage of the race between the Saudi capital of Riyadh and the Wadi Al-Dawasir desert.
The 40-year-old from Esposende, Portugal (third picture) was killed almost instantly at kilometre 276 of the race, going into cardiac arrest as a result of the seriousness of his injuries.
Even though the medical helicopter reached him in just eight minutes and rushed him straight to hospital in Layla, he was confirmed dead on arrival.
The worst of it was that, having fallen to 46th place due to engine failure on the previous race day, Paulo had opted just to finish the Rally for fun, knowing he was not going to win.
In an heroic act of team spirit and friendship, Fernando Alonso's co-driver Marc Coma, who had found out about Paulo's death before setting off the next day, did not tell the ex-Formula 1 driver about it until after they had finished.
Those who enter know – or need to know – that it is officially the toughest race and the hardest motorsport trial on earth, and that even experts are putting their lives at risk.
The race first hit the desert exactly six weeks before Gonçalves' birth, and did, in fact, focus on the Senegalese capital of Dakar, close to Africa's north-western coast. Competitors would start from a different European city every year, and Dakar was the finishing line, meaning they would typically cross Morocco and Western Sahara if they began in western Europe – for many years, until 1995 at least, it began in Paris, but has since set off from Lisbon, Granada and Barcelona.
The starting point is purely a formality and publicity-related, since the first stage 'proper' is not considered to have begun until the teams reach the African continent.
For the first time in its then nearly 30-year history, the Dakar Rally was called off in 2008 at the recommendation of the French government, following the murders of four tourists from France in Mauritania at the hands of terror organisation al-Qaeda a week before.
It was then that the Dakar bit ceased to be set in stone. The Amaury Sports Organisation (ASO), which organises the Rally, opted to hold it outside the African continent for the first time ever in 2009, moving it to South America.
Competitors crossed through several countries, and editions held in South America to date have covered routes through Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Perú, often more than one.
Until 2009, Dakar had normally been somewhere on the route even on the few occasions when it was not the finishing point – in 1992, the race covered the entire continent from north to south, ending in Cape Town, South Africa, whilst in 2000 and 2003, drivers and riders crossed the final line in the Egyptian cities of Cairo and Sharm el-Sheikh respectively.
This year, the trial took place for the first time in Saudi Arabia, setting off from Jeddah on January 5 and ending 12 stages later in Al-Qiddiyah, a trek of 7,856 kilometres, of which 5,000 kilometres were timed. A total of 70% of the terrain was desert, and on the second day, all those in the motorcycle category were put through a 'super-marathon', where they were given just 10 minutes to repair their bikes.
Spain dominates in 2020: One champion, one Best Rookie
By the time Sainz (first and fifth pictures) had reached the last stage of this year's race, his advantage over his nearest two rivals – Qatar's Nasser Al-Attiyah, with Team Toyota, and France's Stéphane Peterhansel, who is Sainz's team-mate with Mini – had stretched to 10 minutes, meaning he had no need to push himself.
He and Al-Attiyah had spent a good deal of the 12 stages fighting for the lead – the latter was forging ahead on day three in an intense and very long day in the circuit around Neom, a futuristic city still under construction, but Sainz won by eight minutes after a penalty was confirmed against Al-Attiyah for not letting him pass.
This penalty benefited Alonso, who finished the stage in fourth place, up from what would have been fifth.
Peterhansel (fourth picture) spent much of the Rally either in front of or just behind Al-Attiyah and Sainz – in fact, he is so far the most successful Dakar participant in history, with six overall championships in the motorcycle category and seven in cars.
He won the Neom-Al-Ullah stretch the next day, but Sainz remained in the lead overall, despite losing five minutes of his advantage over Al-Attiyah.
But the remaining three minutes proved crucial in stage five, from Al-Ullah to Hi'al, when Sainz won for the second time, 17 minutes ahead of Peterhansel in what turned out to be a disappointing day for Alonso; he lost 12 minutes, although remained in the top 10.
The Oviedo-born Grand Prix legend (second picture, in his Dakar Toyota) discovered how cruel the desert Rally could be on the second day, when a huge rock in his path lost him a whopping two-and-a-half hours and put paid to his podium chances – but led to one of the most viral anecdotes of the day, of how he and Marc Coma managed to fix their Toyota with plastic parcel straps and duct tape.
Another stage victory for Peterhansel in the longest trek of the competition – from Hi'al to Riyadh – did not manage to knock Sainz from the top of the leaderboard and the Frenchman only squeezed in a minute and a half ahead of the off-road ace from Madrid, whilst Alonso managed a creditable sixth and avoided punctures, an occupational hazard and a frequent occurrence in almost every stage of the Rally.
Alonso's first podium was in stage eight, coming third to Sainz's second and France's Mathieu Serradori's win on a day when motorcycle and quad races were called off as a mark of respect to Paulo Gonçalves, whose death the previous day overshadowed Sainz's win and Alonso's sixth place.
Once again in a race amongst themselves, the trio of Sainz, Nasser Al-Attiyah and Stéphane Peterhansel shuffled around on the podium three stages before the end – Peterhansel won for the third time, levelling up with Sainz and six-and-a-half minutes ahead of him, whilst the latter's Qatari team-mate came second, a mere 15 seconds behind Peterhansel.
A sense of déjà-vu fell over the Rally for a horrifying few moments in stage 10 between Haradh and Shubaytah when Alonso suffered a dramatic crash almost at the start – the worst so far for the Asturian in his off-road career. This led to the stage being cut short at kilometre 345, which turned out to Sainz's advantage, giving him a fourth win and an 18-minute lead over Al-Attiyah.
Stage 11 became more intense than ever, as Al-Attiyah and Peterhansel fought for every second's advantage, knowing they only had today and tomorrow to challenge Sainz's lead. In fact, Sainz's two closest rivals, in their merciless pursuit of him, were almost neck and neck at the end, with just a 10-second gap between them, but still failed to catch the Spaniard, who kept a healthy eight minutes ahead of them.
Alonso, recovered from his smash the day before, came eighth overall.
Not having to work particularly hard on the last day, between Haradh and Al-Qiddiyah, Sainz opted to take it easy and let himself finish sixth – although even then, he was barely four minutes behind Al-Attiyah, who won his first stage of the entire competition.
Alonso finished third and, in 13th place overall in the competition – very meritable, given that each section has up to 100 entries - was crowned Best Rookie.
The USA's Ricky Brabec gave Honda its first Dakar victory in the motorcycle section since 1989 and ended KTM's 18-year reign as victors, whilst his compatriot Casey Currie won the Side-by-Side.
Russia's Andréi Karguinov won the lorries section, and Chile's Ignacio Casale won in quads.
But the co-drivers should not go without a mention, as the big names would be unable to notch up stage wins without their support – Fernando Alonso gave a tribute to Sainz's partner, Lucas Cruz, as well as to his own Marc Coma.
Sainz's son was the first to congratulate his dad's historic show - “Three Dakars, three different car models, 57 years, same passion, same desire, same hard work, same sacrifice, same motivation,” Carlos Sainz Jr wrote on Twitter the second he heard Carlos Sainz Sr had crowned himself Dakar 2020 champion.
“The pride I feel as his son right now is really difficult to explain, so there's only one thing I can think of to say: You're the [expletive] BOSS, man!”
Within just a few weeks, Spain will see whether the 25-year-old is a chip off the old block, or not: he is currently on holiday pending the start of pre-season training with McLaren, whom he started with last year after taking over from his compatriot Fernando Alonso.
This will be his fifth year in Formula 1, although the first three were spent finding his feet with a well-known team but one which has not been among the top players in recent years – Toro Rosso – before spending a year with Rénault and then being selected to fill Alonso's shoes.
So far, Sainz Jr's best race result is third, at the Brazilian Grand Prix in the penultimate race of last season, which he finished sixth overall, his top position in the standings to date.
He has notched up a few fifth, sixth and seventh places, and a fourth in Singapore in 2017 with Toro Rosso shortly before switching to Rénault, a year when he came ninth in the championship standings overall.
He, too, did not forget the vital rôle played by his triumphant dad's co-driver - “Congratulations, too, to Lucas Cruz for the amazing Dakar he's just done. Leading and opening every day is very commendable. Lucas, you're great!”
Carlos Sainz Sr, who joked that his son was 'talking about him as though he'd won 80 Dakars', dedicated his overall victory to his mechanics, his family, and 'all the people of Spain'.
One final fun fact about Carlos Sainz Sr: he first did his bit for Spain's international sporting fame in 1979, when he became national champion...in squash.
But the motorsport bug bit him harder than squash fever, and the following year he enrolled in the Shalymar Rally for the first time, making his début at the wheel of his now-legendary Rénault 5 Turbo.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
Related Topics
ELDER half of Spain's famous motorsport father and son team, Carlos Sainz's Dakar Rally victory is not only a superhuman feat – being one of the toughest multi-day endurance races on earth – and not only an incredible triumph at his 57 years of age, but is, unbelievably, a hat trick.
Carlos the Elder also won in 2018 when, at 55, he was then the oldest Dakar victor in history – a record he has now broken himself.
At 47, in 2010, he was the first-ever Spaniard to win the Dakar Rally – and so far, the only one.
But Formula 1 legend Fernando Alonso – whose team slot with McLaren has been filled by Sainz's son, also called Carlos Sainz – reached the podium twice, with a third place in the final stage and in the eighth, coming 13th and netting Best Rookie in his first Dakar trial ever.
What is the Dakar Rally and why is it never in Dakar?
For the likes of twice-world champion Formula 1 driver Alonso, the Dakar Rally means a total change of chip – from top-speed racing in cars designed for precisely that, risky corner-cutting and overtaking moves, all on a flat, hard, tarmac surface, they need to readjust to rough, mountainous terrain, but it's not like your traditional off-road. Sand, mud, salt flats, rocks, dense rainforest and undergrowth, and anything else a desert-like, largely-uninhabited swathe of a largely-virgin country or continent can fling at you, is grappled with and often in vehicles that were made for town-driving, motorways or street circuits.
And anyone can join in – you don't have to qualify, or ever have raced before, on or off road – in fact, with up to 80% of participants these days being amateurs, any ordinary petrolhead could find themselves battling it out in a dustbowl with Fernando Alonso and Carlos Sainz Sr.
Five categories – cars, motorcycles, lorries, quads and Side-by-Side, which are 4x4 traction vehicles similar to a pick-up truck but much smaller – mean fans of and champions in all types of motorsport can give it a whirl.
But to say it's not for the faint-hearted is rather like a patient with double pneumonia describing his condition with a very British, “not feeling too bright today, actually.”
Inhospitable territory, extreme temperatures – sometimes reaching well over 50ºC by day, with no shelter and relentless sunlight, and dropping into minus figures overnight – mean you and your co-driver literally have your lives in each others' hands.
And lives have been lost. Six days ago, experienced endurance motorcycle racer, 2013 world champion in rally-cross and second-placed rider in the 2015 Dakar, Paulo Gonçalves – from the aptly-named Team Hero – suffered a dramatic crash in the seventh stage of the race between the Saudi capital of Riyadh and the Wadi Al-Dawasir desert.
The 40-year-old from Esposende, Portugal (third picture) was killed almost instantly at kilometre 276 of the race, going into cardiac arrest as a result of the seriousness of his injuries.
Even though the medical helicopter reached him in just eight minutes and rushed him straight to hospital in Layla, he was confirmed dead on arrival.
The worst of it was that, having fallen to 46th place due to engine failure on the previous race day, Paulo had opted just to finish the Rally for fun, knowing he was not going to win.
In an heroic act of team spirit and friendship, Fernando Alonso's co-driver Marc Coma, who had found out about Paulo's death before setting off the next day, did not tell the ex-Formula 1 driver about it until after they had finished.
Those who enter know – or need to know – that it is officially the toughest race and the hardest motorsport trial on earth, and that even experts are putting their lives at risk.
The race first hit the desert exactly six weeks before Gonçalves' birth, and did, in fact, focus on the Senegalese capital of Dakar, close to Africa's north-western coast. Competitors would start from a different European city every year, and Dakar was the finishing line, meaning they would typically cross Morocco and Western Sahara if they began in western Europe – for many years, until 1995 at least, it began in Paris, but has since set off from Lisbon, Granada and Barcelona.
The starting point is purely a formality and publicity-related, since the first stage 'proper' is not considered to have begun until the teams reach the African continent.
For the first time in its then nearly 30-year history, the Dakar Rally was called off in 2008 at the recommendation of the French government, following the murders of four tourists from France in Mauritania at the hands of terror organisation al-Qaeda a week before.
It was then that the Dakar bit ceased to be set in stone. The Amaury Sports Organisation (ASO), which organises the Rally, opted to hold it outside the African continent for the first time ever in 2009, moving it to South America.
Competitors crossed through several countries, and editions held in South America to date have covered routes through Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Perú, often more than one.
Until 2009, Dakar had normally been somewhere on the route even on the few occasions when it was not the finishing point – in 1992, the race covered the entire continent from north to south, ending in Cape Town, South Africa, whilst in 2000 and 2003, drivers and riders crossed the final line in the Egyptian cities of Cairo and Sharm el-Sheikh respectively.
This year, the trial took place for the first time in Saudi Arabia, setting off from Jeddah on January 5 and ending 12 stages later in Al-Qiddiyah, a trek of 7,856 kilometres, of which 5,000 kilometres were timed. A total of 70% of the terrain was desert, and on the second day, all those in the motorcycle category were put through a 'super-marathon', where they were given just 10 minutes to repair their bikes.
Spain dominates in 2020: One champion, one Best Rookie
By the time Sainz (first and fifth pictures) had reached the last stage of this year's race, his advantage over his nearest two rivals – Qatar's Nasser Al-Attiyah, with Team Toyota, and France's Stéphane Peterhansel, who is Sainz's team-mate with Mini – had stretched to 10 minutes, meaning he had no need to push himself.
He and Al-Attiyah had spent a good deal of the 12 stages fighting for the lead – the latter was forging ahead on day three in an intense and very long day in the circuit around Neom, a futuristic city still under construction, but Sainz won by eight minutes after a penalty was confirmed against Al-Attiyah for not letting him pass.
This penalty benefited Alonso, who finished the stage in fourth place, up from what would have been fifth.
Peterhansel (fourth picture) spent much of the Rally either in front of or just behind Al-Attiyah and Sainz – in fact, he is so far the most successful Dakar participant in history, with six overall championships in the motorcycle category and seven in cars.
He won the Neom-Al-Ullah stretch the next day, but Sainz remained in the lead overall, despite losing five minutes of his advantage over Al-Attiyah.
But the remaining three minutes proved crucial in stage five, from Al-Ullah to Hi'al, when Sainz won for the second time, 17 minutes ahead of Peterhansel in what turned out to be a disappointing day for Alonso; he lost 12 minutes, although remained in the top 10.
The Oviedo-born Grand Prix legend (second picture, in his Dakar Toyota) discovered how cruel the desert Rally could be on the second day, when a huge rock in his path lost him a whopping two-and-a-half hours and put paid to his podium chances – but led to one of the most viral anecdotes of the day, of how he and Marc Coma managed to fix their Toyota with plastic parcel straps and duct tape.
Another stage victory for Peterhansel in the longest trek of the competition – from Hi'al to Riyadh – did not manage to knock Sainz from the top of the leaderboard and the Frenchman only squeezed in a minute and a half ahead of the off-road ace from Madrid, whilst Alonso managed a creditable sixth and avoided punctures, an occupational hazard and a frequent occurrence in almost every stage of the Rally.
Alonso's first podium was in stage eight, coming third to Sainz's second and France's Mathieu Serradori's win on a day when motorcycle and quad races were called off as a mark of respect to Paulo Gonçalves, whose death the previous day overshadowed Sainz's win and Alonso's sixth place.
Once again in a race amongst themselves, the trio of Sainz, Nasser Al-Attiyah and Stéphane Peterhansel shuffled around on the podium three stages before the end – Peterhansel won for the third time, levelling up with Sainz and six-and-a-half minutes ahead of him, whilst the latter's Qatari team-mate came second, a mere 15 seconds behind Peterhansel.
A sense of déjà-vu fell over the Rally for a horrifying few moments in stage 10 between Haradh and Shubaytah when Alonso suffered a dramatic crash almost at the start – the worst so far for the Asturian in his off-road career. This led to the stage being cut short at kilometre 345, which turned out to Sainz's advantage, giving him a fourth win and an 18-minute lead over Al-Attiyah.
Stage 11 became more intense than ever, as Al-Attiyah and Peterhansel fought for every second's advantage, knowing they only had today and tomorrow to challenge Sainz's lead. In fact, Sainz's two closest rivals, in their merciless pursuit of him, were almost neck and neck at the end, with just a 10-second gap between them, but still failed to catch the Spaniard, who kept a healthy eight minutes ahead of them.
Alonso, recovered from his smash the day before, came eighth overall.
Not having to work particularly hard on the last day, between Haradh and Al-Qiddiyah, Sainz opted to take it easy and let himself finish sixth – although even then, he was barely four minutes behind Al-Attiyah, who won his first stage of the entire competition.
Alonso finished third and, in 13th place overall in the competition – very meritable, given that each section has up to 100 entries - was crowned Best Rookie.
The USA's Ricky Brabec gave Honda its first Dakar victory in the motorcycle section since 1989 and ended KTM's 18-year reign as victors, whilst his compatriot Casey Currie won the Side-by-Side.
Russia's Andréi Karguinov won the lorries section, and Chile's Ignacio Casale won in quads.
But the co-drivers should not go without a mention, as the big names would be unable to notch up stage wins without their support – Fernando Alonso gave a tribute to Sainz's partner, Lucas Cruz, as well as to his own Marc Coma.
Sainz's son was the first to congratulate his dad's historic show - “Three Dakars, three different car models, 57 years, same passion, same desire, same hard work, same sacrifice, same motivation,” Carlos Sainz Jr wrote on Twitter the second he heard Carlos Sainz Sr had crowned himself Dakar 2020 champion.
“The pride I feel as his son right now is really difficult to explain, so there's only one thing I can think of to say: You're the [expletive] BOSS, man!”
Within just a few weeks, Spain will see whether the 25-year-old is a chip off the old block, or not: he is currently on holiday pending the start of pre-season training with McLaren, whom he started with last year after taking over from his compatriot Fernando Alonso.
This will be his fifth year in Formula 1, although the first three were spent finding his feet with a well-known team but one which has not been among the top players in recent years – Toro Rosso – before spending a year with Rénault and then being selected to fill Alonso's shoes.
So far, Sainz Jr's best race result is third, at the Brazilian Grand Prix in the penultimate race of last season, which he finished sixth overall, his top position in the standings to date.
He has notched up a few fifth, sixth and seventh places, and a fourth in Singapore in 2017 with Toro Rosso shortly before switching to Rénault, a year when he came ninth in the championship standings overall.
He, too, did not forget the vital rôle played by his triumphant dad's co-driver - “Congratulations, too, to Lucas Cruz for the amazing Dakar he's just done. Leading and opening every day is very commendable. Lucas, you're great!”
Carlos Sainz Sr, who joked that his son was 'talking about him as though he'd won 80 Dakars', dedicated his overall victory to his mechanics, his family, and 'all the people of Spain'.
One final fun fact about Carlos Sainz Sr: he first did his bit for Spain's international sporting fame in 1979, when he became national champion...in squash.
But the motorsport bug bit him harder than squash fever, and the following year he enrolled in the Shalymar Rally for the first time, making his début at the wheel of his now-legendary Rénault 5 Turbo.
And the rest, as they say, is history.
Related Topics
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