How to read a Dakar Rally Road Book

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Ever wondered what that big tower on top of a rally bike is for? Join GasGas Factory Racing’s Sam Sunderland as he explains what the roadbook is, and how he uses it in races like the Dakar Rally.

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Hey I’m a Dakar Rider and today I’m going to be showing you how to navigate through the desert while racing this is called a road book and yeah there’s a lot of information to read today I’m going to show you how to read it the first thing you need to do

Is take your road book and put it into your road book holder and uh yeah it’s quite like a old school system in the end but I think that’s like part of the beauty of rally you know like we haven’t changed to uh a GPS just follow an hour

Through the does it yeah it’s a little bit finicky to put in we’ve obviously got a screen that we have to pop off and yeah Stick it to the bottom rail and yeah it basically rolls in and when you start out rallying you’re always like super nervous about it

Getting twisted or getting jammed and honestly like the more that you worry about trying to keep it straight the more problems you have this part’s a little bit harder to put in normally again thread it through again the tape is stuck right every time find

The rail in in the back there stick it on and then find your way to the first note lock it in place and then put your cover back on I’ll explain to you a few of the buttons that I got here on the handlebars obviously start the bike turn

The bike off this is traction control map so we don’t need them to navigate horn lights fuel tanks uh basically the navigation equipment is uh these this sort of device here normally the start of a stage you want to be matching your kilometers to the kilometers that you have on the GPS uh

Here you have a compass heading electronic Compass some of the notes you’ll see have caps on just to reconfirm the route like especially if you go off pieced so you’re not actually foll in a track you you’re in like no man’s land as we are right now as you

Can see around me and in them situations you have to follow a cap so this is electric Compass um and then we’ll certain along the Route we have way points and this is what this arrow is for and yeah back to the toggle switch one second then so when I toggle the switch

It moves the road book as I sort of progress through the stage and need to go through to the next kilometer uh the buttons on the left hand side are to adjust your autometer so occasionally when you’re in the off piece and then you rejoin a a track you might have more

Kilometers or less kilom so you’ll either add or take away to make sure that you’re always matching up to the the road book the green buttons are a spare one which is this one which normally I have on speed because we have uh speed zones throughout the stage

Sometimes where we have to do the correct speed so you need to know what what speed you’re doing um but we can also use it as a backup uh autometer in case um this one breaks or you have some some trouble and it’s basically the same

You can go up and down with the kilometers basically a quick explanation of the actual Road book diagrams before we set off obviously I said before you want to try and always have your autometer Match Into the kilom as you go you’ll accumulate kilometers and um yeah

Obviously so at 0.4 I’m supposed to exit the piece in cap 358 for 150 M and then rejoin the next piece which is Sandy and rough that’s the sort of rally code um it’s all in French obviously the most important thing is is where you’re going because you don’t want to ride into

Something or off something or into a rock so that’s like Priority One is look where you’re going and then you’ll try and look down and look back up sort of really quickly that you don’t take your eyes off the road for too long so you always want to kind of have

An idea of which kilometer you’re at to know what’s coming up next so 0.9 for example is quite a an important note because it’s two sand spits like um sand dunes across the track which is quite is a danger too and also the pie is twisty

And a little bit uphill at 1.1 which obviously then your autometer would have accumulated and you would arrive to 1.1 km again I need to exit the track I exit the main piece on tracks in cap heading 303 so it’s like another mindset then because youve you’ve left a 4×4 track or

Like left the road which is defined and now you’re sort of in no man’s land following the the cap 1.3 you exit the main piece this is uh still on a track but you exit the main piece down a drop in cap 286 towards the palm trees that’s

Another explanation of a a tulip but you need to be doing it sort of on the Fly um and then yeah try and go really fast and and win yeah so now I’ve done a basic explanation of it um let’s see how it goes so yeah here we are at the start

Of a stage um need to make sure everything’s at zero here the first note is uh 0.0 obviously where we start um and it shows a danger one which are the two sand mounts uh cap 357 we’re 355 right now so we know we’re more or less on the right

Track back so let’s Go um as you can see coming up there’s like a a sand F into vegetation yeah now we’re at 1.1 we need to ex the P to the left on tracks in cap 303 so now we’re 305 X next not is coming around really quick so 1.2 already uh and yeah we’re already

At the next note but it shows that we have to go around the the hole so we’ve come from this direction we’re going to go around this and REO the so 1.3 we need to exit the pie to the left down the hill and towards the

Oasis palm trees which you can see there in the Distance slow down for the D two and then at 100 me change to 197 only at 2.7 coming up we rejoining the Fe we need to go left Right1 Corner we’re Chang to 51 we got some friends out here go speak goat so thankfully they all get out the way hey boys what’s going on they’re up me so now it’s a bit tricky so we’re supposed to be 151 but you can see those Lo heels are tun so

Need to find our way Through than 10 there you go 5 kilm right so that was just 5 km normally we do 3 400 as you can see um there’s quite a lot going on uh quite a lot to think about while trying to go as fast as you can um for

14 days and yeah when you start adding in fatigue and dust and other races uh there’s a lot of things to think about but it’s also what makes it such a cool sport and something quite different from other disciplin so hope you enjoyed the little tour here with me and yeah see

You next time