The Dakar 2024 presents its route in Saudi Arabia and its new features

Le Dakar Rally, and more generally the world of rally-raid, stands out from other forms of motor sports by its human warmth within the bivouac. After several years of being content with a live video on the Internet in the spring, due to the effects of Covid-19, Amaury Sport Organization (ASO) decided to return to a more friendly presentation to announce the main lines of the 2024 Dakar.

The map of the Dakar 2024 in Saudi Arabia.

The organizers of the Dakar have in fact organized this Saturday, June 3, a day of meetings with French and Spanish competitors at the Château-Lastours base (Aude) to mark the opening of registrations and unveil the main lines of the 46th edition. This is scheduled for January 5 to 19, 2024.

The entire route will take place in Saudi Arabia, as has been the case since 2020. The start will be set in AlUla, based on a starting camp scheduled for winter 2023 on the shores of the Red Sea.

The thousand-year-old city of AlUla, crossed from 2020 by the Dakar vehicles, will then give way to 12 stages, over a distance equivalent to 5 km in special stages, including 000% new portions. Nine bivouacs will be set up in total on a very wide strip laid out on the west-east axis, crisscrossed back and forth for a final arrival in Yanbu, on the shores of the Red Sea.

🤩 Still wonderful places for 2024!
Discover the route ⤵️# Dakar2024 #DakarInSaudi pic.twitter.com/W2Nia3tXTV

- DAKAR RALLY (@dakar) June 3, 2023

Planned as the justice of the peace for the 2023 edition, the passage through the desert of the Empty Quarter (Quart-Vide) will once again be part of the party at the 2024 Dakar. On this occasion, the immense expanse of sand and dunes will be the subject of two separate courses between motorcycles/quads and cars/trucks. The big names in the Auto category will therefore have no trace of two wheels to find their way! A bonus system will be applied to them for this stage.

One of the new sporting features is the addition of a new “48 hour” stage, which will take place in this Empty Quarter. The constraints of a marathon stage (no external assistance tolerated in the evening) will be required. But this time, the crews will not be able to know their performance at night! In fact, the pilots and crews will be spread across eight different bivouacs. When the clocks read 16:00 p.m., all vehicles will be required to stop at the next encampment they encounter. Without connection and therefore without visibility on the performances achieved by their rivals, the drivers will camp and then resume their journey the next day at 7 a.m. to complete the part of the route that remains to be covered. The counters will then be read after around 600 kilometers of special.

The T1U category, in which Audi takes part with its hybrid RS Q e-tron, is renewed, and ASO is launching the Dakar Future Mission 1000. On a route reduced to around a hundred km each day, outside the official track, innovative cars (running on hydrogen, 100% electric or hybrid) will be able to collect as much data as possible. No ranking will be established to allow technologies to express themselves without pressure. However, their performance in terms of technical reliability, energy consumption and carbon footprint will be evaluated by a jury of experts.

ALSO READ > Dakar 2023 – The figures to remember from the 45th edition