2012 Dakar Rally

The 2012 Dakar Rally was the 33rd running of the event. It was held in South America for the fourth successive time.

By 17 March 2011, Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner announced that the start would be in Mar del Plata, Argentina, the first stage would end in Bahía Blanca. The course would later cross the provinces of La Pampa, Mendoza, San Juan, La Rioja and Catamarca before crossing to Chile and finally ending in Peru.

On 9 January 2011, Peruvian press announced that Peru would host the three final stages of the 2012 Dakar Rally, with Lima, the Peruvian capital, hosting the awards ceremony. The official announcement took place on 18 February in Paris. A map displaying these final stages was also published.

Near the end of the first stage, motorcycle rider Jorge Andrés Boero died following a crash. It was the 21st death of a competitor in the history of the rally. During stage 2, the ultralight aircraft of a father son duo watching the race crashed. Both died at the scene.

The sixth stage of the rally was cancelled due to heavy rain and snowfalls in the Anden-region near the border of Argentina and Chile.

Notes:

The competition in the category rapidly developed into a two-horse race between KTM riders Cyril Despres and Marc Coma, who between them had won each previous Dakar event since 2005. It was Coma who seized the advantage initially with a victory on stage two, but a navigational error during the third stage dropped him ten minutes behind Despres. The gap between the pair remained close to the ten-minute mark until Despres lost time by getting stuck in mud during the eighth stage, allowing Coma to re-take the lead. The battle remained extremely close for the following stages, with Coma and Despres exchanging the lead on two further occasions before the outcome of the battle was effectively settled during the thirteenth stage – Coma lost almost an hour to his rival, largely through the result of a 45-minute penalty for an engine change but also due to gearbox issues and further navigational trouble. That allowed Despres to take a comfortable victory over Coma by a margin of 53 minutes, with Yamaha rider Hélder Rodrigues, who had held third position since the fourth stage, a further 18 minutes behind the Spaniard having picked up two stage wins during the event. KTM riders Jordi Viladoms and Štefan Svitko completed the top five, with Pål Anders Ullevålseter, who won the final stage of the event, in sixth position. Francisco Lòpez, who won the opening stage, had been running in fourth but was forced to retire after the seventh stage due to a fall which aggravated a previous knee injury.

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