Our rally bikes were packed up in wooden crates and flown out to the service park at the Lusail International Circuit in Qatar, we then flew out to meet them a few weeks later. Being a world championship round, it was a full on set up, especially with the biggest teams in the world competing at this event. We built the bikes up using the small amount of tools we were able to pack and they were ready to go. Before the Baja started, we attended an opening ceremony, we rode up onto the starters stage together, all a bit surreal for us.
The race was set up over three days;
Day 1 Prologue – Total 76km; A smaller day made up of 66km of liaison and a 10km special stage, to set the riders up in timed order for the following day, so a nice easy start to the event. Both of us had a few issues with the paper roadbooks at the start, Carl managed to tear his in half! And Criag’s rollers were slipping, which meant he couldn’t read the navigations notes! We managed to meet up at the start of the stage, Carl set off first, with Craig shortly behind him. With Carl leading out and Criag with no navigation, we rode steadily together through the 10km stage. We got back to the service park and sorted the roadbooks and fuelled the bikes up ready for the following day’s bigger stage.
Day 2 – Total 407km; The day was made up of 161km of liaison and a 245km special stage. It was also set over two roadbooks, we had a 30min neutralization zone to swap the roadbooks over halfway through the day. We agreed that we would try and ride the day together, following our race out in Morocco where riding together didn’t quite work out, we had a new plan and it worked well. The majority of the stage was made up of fast sandy gravel tracks, the navigation was pretty difficult, many riders agreed with us. Lots of information coming up off the road book, see the attached picture, this is an actual section from the roadbook. But we got through it, no issues and hit all the waypoints which meant we didn’t incur any penalties. We got back to the service park, we were only allowed to work on the bikes for two hours, to check them over and get them ready for the second day. They then go into Parc Ferme, where you’re not allowed to touch them, if you’re late or do go back into Parc Ferme, time penalties are added.
Day 3 – Total 412km; The day was made up of 161km of liaison and a 252km special stage. It was set in one roadbook, so it was quite a big roll to load into the roadbook. The special stage started off much the same as the day prior, fast sandy tracks. 80km from the end, the sand dunes started appearing and we ended up deep into them. Navigation was difficult in the dunes, we ended up missing a couple of waypoints which cost us a 30min time penalty. The heat during the day was up to 40deg, so riding around trying to find the two waypoints in deep sand was difficult, so we decided to cut our losses and move on. We rolled into the finish of the stage side by side, just as we planned, both of us absolutely buzzing. We’ve never been overly fussed about the results, it’s always about both finishing in a good shape. But, we did finish in 13th and 14th place, so we were very happy to come away with that!
It was an awesome adventure out in Qatar, we loved every minute of it! We want to take the time to tell a small part of our adventure with you and to say a massive thank you for your support.
Here’s a section of roadbook from the Qatar Baja, that covers just over 7km of the 412km day.
We read these from the top down, from left to right. The first box has the kilometres where the information comes from, the smaller box has the distance from the last tulip. Then the middle
box has the information in that gives a description of the landscape. The far-right box has addition information on the track.
1 – At 55.5km, 740m from the last tulip: Double caution the track goes through a ditch and then there’s rocks for 400m following the principal piste (main track).
2 – At 57.07km, 1.57km from the tulip above: Double caution, there’s a compression down. And then single cation for more rocks and then there’s a track running parallel to this one.
3 – At 59.71km, 2.64km from the tulip above: This one is highlighted blue with an ‘M’ circled, this is a mandatory waypoint that we must get, the bike has a gps device that’s linked to the organisers and notifies them that we’ve hit the waypoint. At that point we turn right before the tyre and our cap heading should 220deg from that position, we have a digital compass on the bike that gives a live heading, we just need to make sure the bike is pointing the right way.
4 – At 59.71km, 1.62km from the tulip above: There’s a fork in the track, we take the left fork,our cap heading from that point should be 260deg. And then 700m from that point the cap heading should be 220deg as the corner turns.
5 – At 62.59km, 1.26km from the tulip above: We come to a junction in the road, take the left turn, once we’ve turned left the cap heading should be 155deg and should go through to 170deg.
As mentioned above this is just 7km of information of a 412km day, so there’s lots going on and we’re doing speeds of up to 140kmh across the very technical terrain, as well as trying to read the roadbook and take the information in. During Dakar it would be very likely that we’ll be seeing distances over 800km in the day, so there’s going to be a huge amount of information to take in. We also only get to see the roadbook 15min before the start of the day.
