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David Castira is of an age that has experienced the Dakar Rally in Africa and South America, so who better to be race director than the Frenchman, who is responsible for mapping out the race route in Saudi Arabia.
It’s a daunting task that will provide an equally testing challenge for the 434-strong caravan of cars, bikes, quads and trucks that set off from Bisha in southwest Saudi Arabia for Friday’s start.
Twelve stages of more than 8,000 kilometers await 778 competitors from 72 countries before concluding on January 17 in Shabitah on the border with the United Arab Emirates.
And at the center of it all is the man Castira who, as co-driver to Cyril Despres, finished third in the 2017 edition of the world’s most famous endurance rally.
The 54-year-old, who hails from near the Pyrenees in southwest France, isn’t just basking in the glory of running races.
The calendar had just ticked into February — just two weeks after the end of last year’s event — when he opened his laptop and pored over Google Earth for hours, eyeing a possible route for the 2025 edition.
He traces lines on maps of endless miles of desert and sand dunes where he believes motorcycles, trucks and cars can safely traverse the difficult terrain.
“I spend whole evenings, even nights, tracing, writing, trying to work out the forward areas,” he told AFP at the Bisha bivouac camp.
Casteira, who was appointed to his post in March 2019 and was in charge when Riley moved from South America to Saudi Arabia for the 2020 renewal, tries to reconcile that.
There are routes that offer technical challenges and other stages where competitors have the freedom to lean full throttle on the accelerator.
He points out the ascents and descents, and finds a good dose of rocks to create a multifaceted course for the forecastle and the 12 steps that follow.