TopGear.com at Dakar 2015: behind the scenes

Apart from the racing, one of the most fascinating parts of the Dakar race is the bivouac.

It's a mobile base camp with a population of over 3000 that contains the race officials, the teams/drivers and media, and acts as the service area, hotel and logistical HQ for the whole event.

Each day, every single team has to pack up, hit the road and be set up in the new destination in by the time the cars come back off that day's stage.

The bivouac nomadically lumbers across the landscape with such impeccable efficiency, if it were weaponised it'd probably be the most ruthless army in the world.

Last night we headed to the bivouac and came back with a notepad full of Top Gear Top Facts. So click through the gallery above and jot down some pub ammo.

The bivouacs are situated in all kinds of locations, from the heart of the desert to local race tracks.

When the cars are ready to leave for stages at 5.30am, a team's trucks, support vehicles and assistance trucks have to be packed up and ready to hit the road.

It typically takes two hours to pack up, and one and half to set up camp at the new destination. The route there is set out by the rally organisers - the ASO - beforehand and follows tarmac roads where possible.

However detours are often required in order to reach the bivouac points, making the assistance route longer than the 5,772 mile race route. And because the trucks have to be there before the race cars, it's a race within a race.

As all 665 competitors have to return to head to camp each night, it's a great place for spectators to see the 138 cars, 164 bikes, 48 quads and 64 trucks competing.

We've been blown away by the enthusiasm and support for the race here in South America. Last year, just in Argentina, 2.5 million people came out to holler their support for the free show on the road. And where in the UK people may ‘pop down for a bit', the locals here are out from the first to the last car and go to extreme lengths to access stages and keep the racers gee'd up.

The bivouac is self-contained and not accessible to the public. When teams arrive, they set up their portable grease monkey garages as quickly as they can. When we saw it, it looked like they were on the doorstep of Mordor. Not a bad sight to wake up to.

The bigger teams have their own plots as they've got more stuff to fit in. Peugeot, for example, have to fit in four people carriers, four motorhomes, three support 4008s, a mission control big rig, one assistance truck, one quick assistance car, six assistance trucks and enough space for a small festival's worth of pop-up tents for everyone to sleep in.

Drivers sleep in the motorhomes with their co-drivers. Which, considering they've spent all day in the car together, can be a lengthy test of character as they effectively don't leave each others side for the full two weeks.

When drivers do arrive, they de-brief, have a shower then head to the massage table.

Being strapped in to a car and thrown about endlessly for two weeks straight takes its toll. Bodies are subjected to daily destruction as bones slowly quake to dust and organs are pulverized.

After a gruelling stage like on the second day, drivers return to service with their human frames like fleshy bags of pain. But some oil and a firm pair of hands get the creases out ready for another battering.

The cars, meanwhile, are cleaned, fuelled and worked on. The Dakar Rally is the equivalent of competing in 13 Daytona 500s or Indianapolis 500s on consecutive days, but you have to rebuild your car each night.

First, the whole car is blasted with compressed air - inside and out - to get rid of the excess dust and sand.

Here in South America there's a type of terrain know as ‘fesh-fesh'. This is a fine, powdery dust that helps creates the epic pictures you frequently see from the rally. 

However if a car covered in fesh-fesh goes through a water, the powdery sand mixed with water can find its way into the small gaps and openings of the vehicle's components, potentially causing breakdowns when the mixture hardens.

And trust us, competitors will be finding fesh-fesh in places fesh-fesh should never be found for months after the rally.

Each set of mechanics has a dedicated checklist to determine what state of health the car is in. This typically takes four hours. If any component has broken that day, repairing it is added time on top of that.

Brakes and tyres are changed daily. Some bigger parts are scheduled into the checklist to be changed further into the rally. On Saturday's rest day, the whole car is stripped down and rebuilt. That includes; engine, gearbox, dampers - the works. What you're left with at the end is, basically, a new car. It needs to be as the drivers are then going into one of the events Marathon Stages.

This is will be the first year that cars and trucks have completed a Marathon Stage since 2005.

The Marathon Stage is a stage lasting for two consecutive days during which time assistance vehicles is banned. The aim is to bridge the gap between the bigger well-funded manufacturer-backed teams and the private competitors.

The stage involves the competitors camping together in an isolated bivouac, where they sing Kum-ba-ya round a can of baked beans on a campfire. Maybe.

Meanwhile the vehicles are taken into a closed area where they're worked on individually. But, to keep within the spirit of the race, competitors are allowed to help each other out.

At 6pm each night the road book for the next day's stage is released. The only information provided in the road book is small directions to the destination and the distance to it. This keeps the navigators on their toes as they have less than 12 hours to work out where they're going the next day.

Fluorescent highlighters are used to mark various points and kinds of danger. It may look simple, but the road book is all in French rally-speak, making it especially difficult for foreigners.

Bigger teams have specific people to go through the road book and mark them. They may even have another dedicated person who cross-references the road book with satellite info and maps to find a quickest route to the waypoints.

Smaller teams don't have this luxury. They have to do it themselves, after a full days driving/riding. No rest for the wicked, eh?

All cars are fitted with GPS, but it's not your normal TomTom. The designated ASO GPS device does not have a display or a soothing voice to tell you to make a legal U-turn if you take a left into the dried riverbed instead of a right.

It's there so the organisers can keep track of the location and orientation of the vehicle to spot if they're in any danger. The system also records when and at what speed the contestant's car passes the mandatory waypoints.

Waypoints are areas that contestants are required to pass in addition to the official checkpoints. They're there primarily for the purpose of keeping contestants out of the way of hazards: unexpected cliffs, rivers, bloody big boulder fields etc.

When a race car approaches a waypoint, the GPS monitor starts up and displays the direction and distance to the point. There are two types of waypoints: a hidden waypoint (WPM, or "waypoint mask") and a waypoint safety (WPS).

With a WPM, the GPS starts up when a race vehicle comes within 800m of the point, and registers the vehicle as having "passed" when it comes within a 200m radius of the point. With a WPS, to keep contestants out of the way of hazards, the GPS starts up at a 3km radius of the point, and registers a vehicle as having "passed" when it comes within 90m of the point. Contestants must pass all waypoints, of which there are usually 40 to 50 per day.

Not having a navigator to shout directions at them, bikers' road books automatically scroll to show them the upcoming route. But having to look at the route, the mileage to it, then calculate how far that is from where they are at that point, while trying not to drop their bike as it jumps, hops and skids its way over the terrain is quite a tall order. Proficient multi-taskers need only apply.

All bikes are fitted with this alarm. It's to warn them that there's a car approaching and to get out of its way pronto. It only works in a range of 200-300 metres and it's up to the navigator in the car behind to set it off. Sometimes dust and various other things cause interference, making incidents like Carlos Sainz had on Stage Two - where he knocked a biker off - not an uncommon occurrence.

If an accident does occur, all competition vehicles are fitted with a S.O.S button. This sends a signal out to the organisers to scramble help. Because of a fleet of helicopters with medical staff on board follows each stage, help is never more than seven minutes away.

By constantly monitoring the GPS signals, the organisers will also send help if a vehicle is seen to be static for too long. It's also other competitor's duty to notify them if they spot anyone in danger.

Potential casualties are returned to the bivouac's field hospital. If more serious medical attention is needed, they're transferred to the nearest hospital.

Colossal assistance vehicles are used to transport key personnel such as mechanics and managers. Separate assistance trucks carry large quantities of spare parts, tyres and other materials.

Assistance trucks are also fitted with equipment such as power generators, air compressors and a shed load of gaffer tape. At night, the bivouac becomes a hive of frenetic activity with people pulling out draws and parts under night lights trying to get things sorted for the next day.

But with a typical Dakar night's sleep normally counted in minutes, not hours, any opportunity to catch some Zzzs is duly taken.

Even though everyone's under an immense amount of pressure, the bivouac is an incredibly friendly and welcoming environment. Drivers are floating around the paddock comparing notes and always willing to chat, like current rally leader Mini X-Raid driver, Nasser Al-Attiyah. He says hi, by the way.

What you see here is a Camion. Which, if you haven't got your copy of Tricolore textbook handy, is French for truck. Looks awesome, doesn't it?

This is the main hub and nerve centre of the bivouac. It contains the bogs, showers, press room, restaurant and all the official bods' offices.

A pack of roving reporters and TV staff fly from bivouac to bivouac each day on old military aircraft to keep you readers and the billion-odd viewers on TV up to date.

Internet isn't the desert's strongest point, so everything is done via satellite. Which costs €20,000 for two weeks access. Making the fibre optic broadband deals in the UK look cheap for once.

Everyone eats together. Being a French event, each night - without fail - cheese and wine is served.

The most gruelling class of the Dakar are the people competing in the Malle Moto class. Only twenty entrants are allowed to do participate, but they're the hardest of them all.

See, the Dakar is quite an expensive thing to commit to. For bikers, the entrance fee is €15,000. For cars, it's €26,000. But that doesn't include all the additional aspects; fuel, transport, team costs etc. The Malle Moto is the most frugal, yet most brutal, way to get your Dakar fix.

Everyone in this category is a one-man band. They have no mechanic to hand their biker to at the end of a stage, no one to go through the route book with and no one to put their tent up - they have to do everything themselves.

If you're in the Malle Moto, you get one tiny metal box for all your stuff. It's put on a lorry each day and will meet you at the bivouac at the end of the day. Yep, that's everything for the most arduous and exhausting two-week endurance race on the planet in one small box. Big respect.

To save time, most teams use festival-friendly pop-up tents. Roughly one hour twenty minutes of the hour and half pack up time is trying to get the tents back in their bags.

"Jim, I hope you've got that fire extinguisher handy"

Strolling round the paddock allowed us to look deeply into the gubbins of the cars.

This is definitely not your run-of-the-mill indestructible Hilux. See that big carbon-kevlar box behind the driver and navigators head? That's the monstrous fuel tank needed to feed the V8 petrol engine up front. The air-conditioning system is positioned behind that and the hikers bottles definitely aren't filled with Ribena. They're brimmed with vital fluids for the brakes, steering and engine in case they break down in the desert. There's even a Black and Decker power drill in the door card.

As part of the sponsorship deal, Michelin provide bikes with fresh tyres each night and Total top them up with free fuel. Unfortunately, cars don't get the same privilege.

Ah! So that's what the back of a race truck looks like. We've got to admit, it's slightly disappointing. We were expecting it to be full of Amazon deliveries, or something.

The flow of traffic into the bivouac never slows as people suffering from the last stage straggle their way in throughout the night.

Support crews swiftly follow. Let's hope they phoned the team ahead to tell them to keep their dinner warm in the oven.

Work goes on until the early, early hours. Then everyone has to pack up, move on and do it all over again the next day. Crazy, isn't it?