Wired Article on Dakar Rally
Geeky Hot Rodder Takes On Dakar
By Jennifer Kahn
02:00 AM Jan, 05, 2007
LAS VEGAS -- Ronn Bailey's practice car has no windshield. This has been a problem twice: once when the car drove through a swarm of bees, and again when, coming over a low rise, it overtook a startled flock of birds.
At first, I find this troubling. But as we push 100 across the ditch- and boulder-filled south Nevada desert, it becomes clear that there are more pressing things to worry about.
"The rocks are what will get you. You have to learn to spot them," Bailey shouts, wrenching the steering wheel as we clear a four-foot gully. "And they can be hidden! Behind bushes! There's a rock!" He points so suddenly that the car dives sideways and sags frighteningly on its suspension.
I am, in that moment, extremely aware of my neck, which feels as thin and fragile as a daisy stem. "Do you see how focused I am?" Bailey demands. "You've got to keep your focus every second when you're driving. Chess is good practice." I ask Bailey if he plays chess. He says no.
As preparation for the upcoming Dakar Rally -- the venerable 5,400-mile off-road race from Europe to Senegal by way of the Sahara Desert -- Bailey is training now in the desert outside of Las Vegas.
As CEO of Vanguard Integrity Professionals, a Las Vegas-based company that develops security software for major corporate mainframes, Bailey is a strange entry to the world's most dangerous race. Squat and potbellied, with deeply recessed eyes and a ginger pompadour brushed so that he appears to be standing in a permanent high wind, Bailey looks less like a race-car driver than a retired Vegas emcee.
At 57 he is one of the older competitors entered in the 2007 rally. "I have a unique problem," he admits at one point. "Five days into the race, my damn hands swell up." He flexes his fingers slightly to show just how little they can bend. "I can't even hold a cup of coffee."
Today he's taking me for a practice run in his test car: a scrawny off-road buggy with splayed tires and a racer's engine. It's not the rig he'll use in the race (he doesn't want to wreck that one) but it handles the same.
"Dakar is the ultimate race in the world," he says, smoking serial cigarettes with the fidgety energy of someone understimulated. "It's like driving from L.A. to New York, turning around and coming back, then turning around again and driving to Denver -- all off road. Nothing else comes close to it in magnitude."
This year's race, which begins Jan. 6, opens with a traverse of the snowbound Atlas Mountains in Morocco, descends into a thousand-mile crossing of the Sahara, reemerges in Mali, and finally turns west for a homestretch race across the savannah into the Senegalese capital, Dakar.
It's a brutal tour. Created in 1979, after the French racer Thierry Sabine got lost in the desert, the two-week stage race navigates remote terrain via a written book of directions and a GPS crippled to function solely as a compass. (To prevent shortcuts, the route is tagged with hidden GPS waypoints that appear only when the driver gets within a radius of three miles.)
By Jennifer Kahn
02:00 AM Jan, 05, 2007
LAS VEGAS -- Ronn Bailey's practice car has no windshield. This has been a problem twice: once when the car drove through a swarm of bees, and again when, coming over a low rise, it overtook a startled flock of birds.
At first, I find this troubling. But as we push 100 across the ditch- and boulder-filled south Nevada desert, it becomes clear that there are more pressing things to worry about.
"The rocks are what will get you. You have to learn to spot them," Bailey shouts, wrenching the steering wheel as we clear a four-foot gully. "And they can be hidden! Behind bushes! There's a rock!" He points so suddenly that the car dives sideways and sags frighteningly on its suspension.
I am, in that moment, extremely aware of my neck, which feels as thin and fragile as a daisy stem. "Do you see how focused I am?" Bailey demands. "You've got to keep your focus every second when you're driving. Chess is good practice." I ask Bailey if he plays chess. He says no.
As preparation for the upcoming Dakar Rally -- the venerable 5,400-mile off-road race from Europe to Senegal by way of the Sahara Desert -- Bailey is training now in the desert outside of Las Vegas.
As CEO of Vanguard Integrity Professionals, a Las Vegas-based company that develops security software for major corporate mainframes, Bailey is a strange entry to the world's most dangerous race. Squat and potbellied, with deeply recessed eyes and a ginger pompadour brushed so that he appears to be standing in a permanent high wind, Bailey looks less like a race-car driver than a retired Vegas emcee.
At 57 he is one of the older competitors entered in the 2007 rally. "I have a unique problem," he admits at one point. "Five days into the race, my damn hands swell up." He flexes his fingers slightly to show just how little they can bend. "I can't even hold a cup of coffee."
Today he's taking me for a practice run in his test car: a scrawny off-road buggy with splayed tires and a racer's engine. It's not the rig he'll use in the race (he doesn't want to wreck that one) but it handles the same.
"Dakar is the ultimate race in the world," he says, smoking serial cigarettes with the fidgety energy of someone understimulated. "It's like driving from L.A. to New York, turning around and coming back, then turning around again and driving to Denver -- all off road. Nothing else comes close to it in magnitude."
This year's race, which begins Jan. 6, opens with a traverse of the snowbound Atlas Mountains in Morocco, descends into a thousand-mile crossing of the Sahara, reemerges in Mali, and finally turns west for a homestretch race across the savannah into the Senegalese capital, Dakar.
It's a brutal tour. Created in 1979, after the French racer Thierry Sabine got lost in the desert, the two-week stage race navigates remote terrain via a written book of directions and a GPS crippled to function solely as a compass. (To prevent shortcuts, the route is tagged with hidden GPS waypoints that appear only when the driver gets within a radius of three miles.)
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