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With 50% more participants than last year, on the starting line, and twice as many participants in SSV, the Morocco Desert Challenge (MDC) 2019 breaks all records.
On Saturday, April 13, nearly 300 rally raid vehicles, 210 trucks and assistance cars and 1,051 people took the start of the eleventh edition of the rally in Agadir, making it the second largest cross-country rally event in the world. In the trucks category, the Morocco Desert Challenge is even number 1 with 35 racing trucks.
“It is with pride that we can say that there are many top teams at the start. Although there are more and more high level pilots on the MDC, the traditional and friendly spirit remains. The Morocco Desert Challenge is and remains an amateur rally. This is reflected, for example, in the large number of SSV registrations. In this category, easy to access and very fun, the number of participants has more than doubled, from 28 participants last year to 62 this year,” says Gert Duson, MDC Belgian director.
MAZ, De Rooy and Gregoor’s Iveco, EVM’s MAN, Renault’s Mammoet and Riwald, Scania from Dakar-Speed and Miklos Kovaks will compete. It promises to be a fantastic battle of a very high level. All are pure racing trucks and not fast assistance trucks.
The other categories are not left out, with about 80 rally cars, more than 70 motorcycles and quads, more than 60 SSV and 30 raid cars. In these classes there are also many famous international names, including Joan Pedrero in motorcycles, Erik van Loon, Paulo Ferreira, Hennie De Klerk, Thomas Bell and Fernando Alvarez in cars.
The program presented to participants includes eight challenging steps. The adventure begins in Agadir, where the technical and administrative inspections took place on April 11 and 12. In this eleventh edition, navigation has been given an even more important role.
The itinerary drawn by the sports director Jean-Claude Kaket will lead the participants of the Moroccan Sahara in the extreme south, passing through different areas of dunes to the north, arriving on April 20 in Saïdia on the Mediterranean Sea.
“It is literally a side by side, more than 2,500 kilometers of race without a single km of connection, to meet all the variations of landscapes that Morocco offers us. This is a completely new course, with which we seduce both new participants and those who have been loyal to us for years, high level pilots and those for whom the Morocco Desert Challenge is a part of fun, holidays in somehow because again, the MDC is and remains an amateur rally where friendliness is as important as the race itself,” says Duson.
