Dakar 2011
For the 2011 Dakar Rally, the motorcycle field was made up of enduro bikes with a maximum of 450cc which increase the manufacturer involvement from Aprilia, BMW, Honda, and Yamaha in an attempt to unseat a decade of KTM rally-raid dominance.
Another significant change for the 2011 Dakar motorcycle teams was to reduce the influence of GPS and place the emphasis on reading of the road-book. Pure navigation skill is the very essence of the enduro rally-raid discipline.
Last year, the Dakar competitors were guided by their instruments when they reached a distance of 3 kilometers from the way point markers (WPM). In 2011, the distance required to trigger the GPS was reduced to just 400 meters.
The 2011 Dakar motorcycle results saw Marc Coma win again and continue the dominance of the KTM, this time on the KTM Rally 450cc. Cyril Despres from France finished second, also on a KTM, at 15:04, with the Yamaha of Helder Rodrigues from Portugal, taking fourth, at 1:40:20 back.
In fifth was the Aprilia of Chaleco Lopez from Chile, with the only other non-KTM motorcycle racer in the top 10 belonging to American Quinn Cody riding a Honda prepped by JCR.
Also, the interest shown by television channels, in the Dakar Rally 2011, from all over the world reached new levels; via 69 broadcasters, as images of the rally were broadcast to 190 countries, with the entire coverage totaling 1,200 hours.
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