Dakar Rally 2022: veterans, debuts and biofuels – a photo essay

From Jeddah to Riyadh and everywhere in between, this has been a visually spectacular year at the Dakar Rally in Saudi Arabia. Fourteen days of dunes, fast straight tracks, rocky sections, and cliff backdrops. Titles have been contested and first-time entrants have been broken in. All of the contestants were hoping for glory in the vast desert landscape where mistakes are rarely forgiven, but few claimed it.

The dust settles on the world’s toughest rallying event and a variety of stories emerge from the Saudi desert. Nani Roma, the seasoned veteran who has won the Dakar on both a motorbike and in a car, showed us how far biofuels have come in recent years.

Mashael Alobaidan, on the other end of the spectrum in terms of experience, competed in her first Dakar. The challenge for her though – simply getting to the race in the first place, after facing numerous rejections and setbacks as a female driver. Ricky Brabec, the first American to win the Dakar on a motorbike in 2020, had hoped to claim back his title for team Monster Energy Honda. But as ever with the Dakar, things do not always go to plan.

Bahrain Raid Extreme driver Nani Roma and co-driver Alex Haro Bravo drive their Prodrive Hunter T1 on Stage 7 from Riyadh to Al Dawadimi. Photograph: Marian Chytka

As Nani Roma ploughs through the dunes outside of Riyadh in Stage 7, clouding the windscreen of his Prodrive Hunter T1, and blinding press photographers who have been flown in to cover this year’s event despite challenging Covid protocols, his mind is likely far from Dorset where the Hunter T1 was initially tested. The tank training ground in Bovington was thought to offer terrain comparable to that of Saudi Arabia, or at least as close as England could offer.

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