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Desert diesels and Dakar
Page 18
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The Dakar Rally is the world's most arduous motorsport event.
CM reports from Germany as the MAN-equipped entrants strap themselves in for a bumpy ride.
TO PETROLHEADS, Dakar conjures up visions of a dusty rally where competitors tear between African villages like some sort of biblical sandstorm. Despite months of painstaking preparation, statistics show that roughly half the 525 participants will fail to make it as far as the scenic seafront finish.
Subtract the swathes of unusual scenery from the 9.000km route and Dakar is all about human and mechanical durability. It's also about speed, but just keeping on the pace is a hard enough task.
So who's in the running this year? The ready-for-anything Russian Kama7 is a good bet, as are the Daf-based offerings from the G1NAF/de Rooy partnership and the TGA-equipped Dutch Exact-MAN team (they finished second and eighth in last year's truck category). One aspect of the rally's appeal is that small and light does not always equal fast. In years gone by, truck entries have held their own against the tiddlers, especially when the terrain becomes nightmarish.
The trucks fall into three categories: racing (T4), rapid support (T5), and the service trucks which take a more direct route from bivouac to bivouac.
The Exact-MAN team will running two 4x4 versions of the TGA: a D28-powered 18.531 T4 and a new 'light' D26-powered 18.480T5 which supersedes the LE 18.280.They will he backed up by two service trucks, a 4x4 and a 6x6. In addition, MAN will use a factory-hacked TGA 26.480. A T5 vehicle could, in theory, win the race despite having unpredictable and time-consuming service tasks to contend with. With vehiclesof this nature there tends to be less volume assembling and more slow building. While the core ingredients are off-theshelf MAN parts. each vehicle is bespoke. There are a number of key differences between these trucks and your workaday machine, most notably power and simplicity. It's interesting to note that when durability and reliability are overriding factors of design, the clock is turned backwards. For example, the Exact-MAN race trucks rely on drum brakes.
The suspension system features a longer-travel three-leaf parabolic spring set-up, combined with a double shock-absorber system:111e cab has been stiffened (for both strength and movement), and the body features restriction stabilisers to calm unnecessary roll. Handling characteristics, roll and suspension movement can be reduced with the aid of tyre-pressure monitoring (TPM) systems, enabling the drivers to inflate and deflate the 14.00 R20 tyres on the move.
The Euro-3 D28 that powers the 14 race trucks has been uprated from 530 to almost. 700hp: torque is up from 2,400 to 3,000Nm at 1,100-1,800rpm, instead of 1,0001,400rpm. The lighter T5s have been doctored too, with 200Nm of extra torque and more than 500h p. Having ridden in one of the ExactMAN TGAs through a German forest. we can confirm that midrange acceleration in the middle of the 8-speed ZFbox is extraordinary —especially up steep slopes.
MAN's involvement in the Dakar doesn't end with the race trucks; a number of teams rely on MAN support and service vehicles. Legendary Dakar winner Julia Klienschmidt recently defected from the Volkswagen Touareg team to join X-Raid BMW; both teams use MAN, as does the formidable KTM motorcycle team.
In the UK this event has never attracted the fanatical following it gets in some other European countries, but UK fans can see daily coverage on Eurosport (Sky channel 410).
The action starts on 6 January; see www.dakancom for more details. And for a full report of the rally see CM 8 February.