The 2006 Dakar Rally

In 2005 NASCAR bad boy Robby Gordon was a hero when he sacrificed the chance to win stages on the grueling Dakar race to aid Jutta Kleinschmidt, his VW teammate. The steering broke on her race Touareg a few days before the end of the event. Gordon's skill as a race mechanic saved the race for her, and she finished third behind two Mitsubishi Pajero/Montero Evolutions. Gordon eventually finished in 12th place.

This year, Gordon elected to run his own team instead of returning as a driver on the five-car VW team. His gallant effort to create a winning U.S. car was a long shot. But give him credit for trying. "I want to be the first American to win," he said. "It's something I've dreamed of doing."

Gordon's connections with GM and Jim Beam provided him with the chance to build a unique Trophy Truck with a pseudo-Hummer body. This year, the Dakar organizers relaxed some regulations with a new score class, so he didn't have to make many modifications to a race-ready Baja Trophy Truck. The main difference was adopting an independent rear suspension, as Dakar race vehicles are allowed far less wheel travel. Horsepower also was reduced due to mandated air restrictor plates.

This year's running of the 15-day, 5652-mile-long Dakar began in Lisbon, Portugal on New Year's Eve--not Paris, the traditional site of the race start. The toughest auto race in the world is no longer called Paris-Dakar, as it was until a few years ago. It's now just the Dakar race or rally and starts in a different European city each year, but still finishes in Dakar, the capital of Senegal in western Africa.

It's doubtful anybody would say the race had been getting easier during the past few years. However, sophisticated GPS navigation systems did enable better-equipped crews to virtually eliminate the odds of getting lost. From its beginning, the race across the deserts of northern Africa has always been about teamwork--the codriver's ability to navigate across miles of sand dunes with no tracks counting for as much as the driver's skills at keeping their race car from bogging down in the soft sand.

This year, the organizers severely cut back on the use of GPS navigation equipment, so navigators had to rely on a printed road book and a compass to find their way through the unforgiving desert terrain and along crisscrossing ill-defined tracks.

The level of competition at the top has become quite fierce. There are two manufacturers determined to win. Mitsubishi currently dominates the event, having won all but twice in the past decade. Volkswagen is the challenger--it's determined to wrestle the honors from the Japanese manufacturer.