The photos from this year’s Dakar Rally are wild

Even though most motorsport has largely been put on hold during the global pandemic, one event did manage to mask up and keep going: the Dakar Rally. And boy are we thankful. Because no race on Earth serves up quite as much drama, action and incredible photography like the most torturous endurance race in the world.

For those of you who are new to it, the Dakar originated when a bloke called Thierry Sabine got lost on his motorbike in the Libyan desert during the Abidjan-Nice rally and returned to France with a new route. This then became an annual event. Dakar packed its bag in 2009 and migrated to South America to continue its legacy, and two years ago it moved again, this time to Saudi Arabia.

This year, a total of 310 vehicles (108 bikes, 67 cars, 58 UTVs, 42 trucks, 26 classics and 21 quads) lined up on the start line in Jeddah for the 43rd Dakar on 3 January. Only 206 vehicles came back and crossed the finish line 15 days and 12 stages later. That kind of attrition rate shows you how brutal this event is. See, not only do the drivers and riders have endless crazy terrain and distances to cover (the Dakar is the equivalent of competing in 13 Daytona 500s or Indianapolis 500s on consecutive days, but you have to rebuild your car each night) but they only get to know where they’re going the night before. And GPS isn’t allowed. So experience is key. As is reliability. That’s why the old boys with bags under their eyes and grey hairs sprouting out their ears tend to do well.

People like Stephane Peterhansel, who won the cars category this year in his X-raid Mini (that looks nothing like the Mini your local estate agent drives) serving up a record-extending 14th Dakar Rally victory to become an even goatier GOAT – 30 years after his first victory on a bike. Yes, a bike. Peterhansel has now won eight Dakars behind the wheel of a car and six holding on to handlebars. He’s also now the only driver to have won on all three continents where the race has taken place.

But remember what we said about reliability and consistency? Well, Stephane only won a single stage in the entire 2021 rally. Yet showed remarkable consistency throughout the event, finishing outside the top three in only one stage and never losing more than five minutes to his main opponents, Carlos Sainz (the old one) also in a two-wheel-drive Mini buggy and Nasser Al-Attiyah in a more powerful naturally-aspirated four-wheel-drive Toyoya Hilux but with less suspension travel.

This year's event was not without tragedy, though. French rider Pierre Cherpin sadly passed away from injuries he sustained during the Rally's seventh stage.

As for the bikes, Kevin Benavides on his Honda was the two-wheeled winner – the first South American winner of the bike category ever. While Argentinean Manuel Andújar came top in the quad race and Chaleco López won the newest category, getting his carbon bodied, tubular framed turbo side-by-side across the line quicker than anyone else. Rather predictably, the awesome Kamaz trucks trounced the truck podium as Russian Dmitry Sotnikov and his two teammates fired the 1,150bhp Kamaz Master truck and its huge 13-litre six-cylinder turbocharged engine across the dunes, over rocks and into the air (an impressive achievement given it weighs 9.5 tonnes) across the Saudi landscape.

But it’s not just the drivers, navigators and teams who have their work cut out at the Dakar, as there’s also a squadron of sandy photographers desperately trying to capture the action in between slathering on layers upon layers of sun cream. And their work is utterly spectacular, so check out some of our favourite shots in the gallery above.