General information

A.S.O.

The Amaury Sport Organisation is the name of the company organising Dakar. A.S.O is one of the biggest promoters in Europe, owns L'Équipe France's number one sport newspaper and also organises Tour De France. A.S.O bought the rights to the Dakar from Gilbert Sabine in 1993 from the father of Thierry Sabine the inventor and original organiser of the rally.

Balise

A balise is an emergency-use rescue signal (radio beacon) transmitter that every participant is required to carry, and can also refer to a desert landmark (air route marker).

Bivouac

Bivouac is the Dakar participants' nightly quarter moving with the field day by day. In the centre is the dining tent where all the competitors gather for the evening briefings and where the current results and start positions are announced. „The nightly quarter has many parts. The part belonging to the organizers, that is the race coordination, hospital, press, TV and other media people group around the airplanes carrying them from bivouac to bivouac. There is also a central tent which is considered as the 'Forum Romanum' of Dakar racers. That's where we eat, talk, here take place the briefings and that's where current results, start positions and itiner changes are announced. Every evening it looks like an ant-hill. The third section is the camp of the competitors. Drivers usually separate from bikers, not as if there were any problem with each other, but they start a lot earlier than we do, and if someone, say, tries to breathe life into a factory KTM bike at 2 A.M. 5 meters away from your tent, then you can forget about sleeping. Although there is no silence for a single moment between the arrival of the first racer and the start next day one can get used to a certain level of noise. Lot of people asks how and where we sleep. To make it short: not in a bed with pillows. Besides this, there are lots of ways to go depending on one's habit: some make a tent, others just roll down their sleeping bags and sleep under the sky, but I think truck drivers do it he best. They sleep on the top of their vehicles.” /László Palik/

Chott

„Chott is a kind of dry river bed, where 'dry' can sometimes be put between quotation marks, because while the surface of the ground is dry there could be insidious water veins underneath. These underground waters mostly expose danger for trucks, because the ground could founder more easily under them, but cars could also bury themselves there quite easily. Based on the scene it is difficult to predict what is coming, because the ground seems homogeneous at first, and that's what makes it so evil. But if one sees good marks on such an area it results in a very fast track because it becomes very smooth.” /László Palik/

CP

CP is an abbreviation for checkpoints. Each special stage contains an average of two to four checkpoints and is used to check whether participants are staying on the set course. The checkpoints prevent shortcuts at such points as where the course drastically changes direction, or are set for safety reasons. Failure to pass through a checkpoint can incur a major penalty.

Food

„What do we eat during the race? Usually nothing. Although organisers give you a pack of food every day, but if you have to eat it, then it means - at best - that you have to wait for your truck in the track. At the end of the day there is warm food available at the bivouac. The lunch pack itself contains calorie bombs, so we can get energy by eating the less possible food. There's chocolate, sausage, cheese, sugar, muesli, things like these. We personally distinguish between A, B and C type packs, but it's always a lottery which one you get. Fortunately Gabi and me don't like the same kind of food, so we exercise heavy barter and at the end both of us will be satisfied - I mean, sated” /László Palik/

Erg

„Erg is a dune like area, row of dunes, continuous lines of dunes. The toughest dunes can usually be found in the ergs.” /László Palik/

Fesh-fesh

„Deep sand, deep, soft soil. It makes great demands on the car, especially the engine. It is not only found on sand: sometimes there are grey, rocky places where you only realize that its base is like ash when you are already stuck. If you drive on a fesh-fesh too slow or with an inappropriate tire pressure it will catch you no matter what.” /László Palik/

Temperature

„Some think that Dakar is about driving in a nice hot weather in the middle of winter. But the truth is that Dakar for me is rather about cold than heat. At daytime the weather is really good with an average 30-35 C, which is about 40 C in the car. In the evening and at night the temperature can drop back to 0 and this drastic change of temperature can make you feel even colder. That's why we use the so called 'mummy sleeping bags', which covers the whole body and keeps us warm. There's one trick to it though: you must sleep in it undressed, otherwise it won't work. Well, these are the 3 minutes everyone hates the most. But you rather have this than chattering all night. Brrr” /László Palik/

Iritrack

Iritrack is a tracing system which provides information about the current position of competitors using GPS. This equipment can be used to call for emergency and if the vehicle doesn't seem to move for 10 minutes, the organizers automatically call the given vehicle.

Itiner

Itiner is the document compiled by the organizers and is used by the competitors to accomplish special or liaison stages. In cross country rally the track is kept secret and the itiner is handed just before the start, which means that the track cannot be trained in advance. Parts of the itiner: 1. cumulative distance: which kilometre we are at in the whole race 2. partial distance: which kilometre we are at in the given special stage or liaison route. 3. the sign itself: which direction one should bend, kind of obstacle or landmark to look for 4. comments: helps understanding the signs or warns about possible danger.

CTIS

CTIS stands for Central Tire Inflator System, a system which is used to regulate tyre pressures while the vehicle is moving. For the sake of equality, use of CTIS is only allowed for trucks since 2005.

Qued

Dried river bed.

Liaison route

Liaison route is the route between the daily etape's start and special stage, the daily final special stage and final stage or between two special stages. These must be accomplished by the competitors in a given time interval using the itiner. Being late or too early is both errors and incurs penalties.

Parc Pherme

Closed parking area where cars must be placed before the start and end of the race and (again since 2005) at the campsite of the marathon stages. Competitors can only enter this area 15 minutes before their start time. Cars in the Parc Pherme are not permitted to be touched by crew or mechanics with the exception of the changing of tires or the forced startup of the engine.

Sentinel

Every car is obliged to be equipped with the Sentinel system, which is used to aid in overtaking. The system is able to notify the driver in a 150 meter sector. In the target vehicle a light and/or sound warns the driver. Sentinel also sends notifications in case of accidents when an alarm notification is activated.

Helmet

„At Dakar - just as at any World Cup event - only FIA approved 'homologue' helmets can be worn, which are more or less the same as those worn by rally world championship fellows. Their usage is obligatory at special stages and is suggested at liaison stages. It can be seen that it is flared at both sides at the ears because it contains the communication system which can be connected to the internal speaker using a jack plug and we communicate with each other via this while driving. The importance of this became clear to us at the 2004 Morocco World Cup Race when the system broke down and we had to communicate with Gabi using hand signs. The least I can say is that it is not really efficient...” /László Palik/

Special Stage

These are the stages where the times of competitors are measured. The basis of rally competition is to try to pass through these stages in the shortest possible time.

Camel grass

„Camel grass is the most double-tongued phenomena of the desert. Its root is tough like a rock and will surely tear off your wheels or if you hit it from the wrong angle it could bung your car. This is what made Bruno Saby turn seven times with his Mitsubishi. However, if you see it on a dune you will include its name in your prayer and will follow it, because the sand around it is quite firm and just like buoys on the road it will lead you out of the dunes” /László Palik/

Water

„We must take 5 litres of water with us every day and we definitely drink all of it via our internal drinking system. Simply saying, this is a tube connected to a bottle, but 'drinking system' sounds better :) Drying come in a sneaking way. Adrenaline represses thirstiness and on a number of occasions caused death during the race. To avoid this we try to regularly warn each other about drinking.”