And 20 for the Vendée Ronan Chabot ! They are at the start of their 20th Dakar together this Saturday, January 1 in Saudi Arabia, aboard their 4-wheel drive Toyota.
Each Dakar is an adventure
Ronan Chabot, the pilot, based in Sables-d’Olonne and therefore passionate about rally raid, never tires of the Dakar, even after all these editions. “Each Dakar is different, each Dakar is an adventure. It’s the same motivation each time because it’s our annual meeting, no two Dakars take place in the same way. it’s a human adventure that we come with a co-pilot, mechanics, a whole team with us “.
The great dunes of Saudi Arabia
What he keeps going on are also the grandiose landscapes that he has to cross: “we find ourselves in the midst of magnificent deserts on different continents since our first Dakar took place in Africa, then, for ten years, it was in South America and, now, we are on completely different terrains with the great dunes of Saudi Arabia. So these are different terrains but the DNA of the race remains the same: we come here to spend big days, for a race which is long, which is hard, which is very intense and where anything can happen “.
A place in the top 10?
This is why Ronan Chabot does not want to make a prediction for his twentieth Dakar, but he still hopes to finish in the top 10. For this 44th edition of the rally raid, the competitors have 8,375 kilometers to cover until January 14.