Stay tuned for more updates in the coming weeks or follow along at the official Dakar website or on Facebook.Īmerican trucks are nice, and they are designed for the American market which has very few demands in toughness. So far, the FabSchool team is in 126th place, but the tough stuff is just getting started. Both teams will be collaborating to make sure the two Raptors cross under the checkered flag in 15 days. 375) are racing in a Raptor for the second year after gaining notoriety for their effort in the 2010 Dakar Rally. Javier Campillay and Pablo Rodríguez from the Tamarugal XC Rally Team (Truck No. Mead and Skilton aren’t the only Raptor competing in this year’s Dakar. Under the hood, the 5.4-liter V-8 Raptor is mostly in factory form except for a pair of Odyssey batteries and Royal Purple Racing oil. Inside, there are Cobra seats with Crow harnesses. 374) is outfitted with an ARB locker, King Shocks at each corner and wheels from Walker Evans Racing. The FabSchool/General Tire Raptor (Truck No. They had to custom-fabricate hardware and line up sponsors in less than six months to get the F-150 ready for South America. Mead and Skilton have been running against the clock since well before the green flag dropped at this year's Dakar Rally. Mead was also a support driver for Volkswagen in the 2009 Dakar Rally. If you recall, that race was stopped by a terrorist threat, and many of the racers, including Mead’s team, were evacuated. In 2000, she took part in the race when it was held in Africa, along with veteran off-road racers Darren Skilton and Troy Johnson racing for Kia. Mead, a freelance writer for, is well versed and experienced in off-road racing and has participated in the Dakar race once before as a co-driver. 16, is a 9,500-kilometer (5,903 miles) circuit from Buenos Aires to the Atacama Desert in Chile. This year’s Dakar kicked off Saturday in Argentina, with an on-road rally from Buenos Aires to Victoria, before starting Stage 1 on Sunday in the first off-road leg from Victoria to Cordoba. Since 2009, it’s been run through the deserts and mountains of Chile and Argentina. The Dakar Rally (formerly the Paris Dakar Rally) is the most grueling motorsports event in the world. There's a class, and a vehicle, for everyone, and all of those vehicles can be found in the drag racing classifieds.While we’re still shaking off a restful break from the Christmas and New Year’s holidays, Sue Mead, Darren Skilton and the team supporting the FabSchool/General Tire Ford F-150 SVT Raptor are racing in the 2011 Dakar Rally in South America. But there are also whole series’ of street and stock-performance vehicles including Pro Street, Pro Stock, Sportsman and bracket, stock and super stock. Organizations like the NHRA, the PDRA (Professional Drag Racers Association), and the IHRA (International Hot Rod Association) serve as sanctioning bodies that create the rules for classes of racing, and govern the types of racing and series that amateur and professional racers participate in to ensure safety measures and standards of conduct.ĭrag Racing appeals to both drivers who want to challenge the powertrain in a daily driver, and those who want to build and race custom vehicles that only thrive by the light of the strip.ĭrag Racing encompasses many types of amateur and professional specialty racing vehicles including door cars, funny cars, motorcycles, dragsters, and pro modifieds. Now, drag racing is a professional sport, with classes covering everything from junior dragsters, to motorcycles, to vintage vehicles, to nitro-powered vehicles. Hot rodders would race each other on long empty strips of road. Professional organizations like the National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) the largest sanctioning body in professional drag racing, were started to counteract illegal street racing, which can be very dangerous due to the speed and power of the vehicles and the magnitude of damage that occurs when something goes wrong and these vehicles malfunction or crash.ĭrag Racing really got its start as a contest in the 1950s with the rise in popularity of hot rods – vehicles with classic bodies ( 1932 Fords, etc) which were modified with modern engines and tuning to create more power and run faster. While most drag racing now takes place on a professional race track, there are both televised staged street contests and illegal street races which still take place. Drag Racing is a contest between two vehicles to determine which can go the fastest from a standing start to full open throttle over an agreed upon distance, which is usually an 1/8 mile, ¼ mile or 1000 feet.
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