It's always the people with initiative who make it in any business. I had the chance to chat with one of those people, and not coincidentally the man who improved the average off road lover's chances to participate in the toughest but most rewarding competition in the world: the Paris - Dakar. An interview with the founder of Rally Raid international, Paul Round.
R.T.: I suppose I need to start with a question that I put forward to all my interviewees:
What got you into off roading? Or better yet, who got you into off roading?
Paul: I am now a 52 year old man but not much has changed from long ago. As a boy I was always in the woods, in the old quarries or on the coalpit stacks making race tracks with my friends and putting the old John Bull nobly tyres on our bikes long before anyone had seen a bmx bike.
It was not long before we decided to reach for bigger hills. After a little thinking we found that we needed engines, the pedals that took us sky high until then were great fun but hard work. At 12 it was impossible to afford a motorcycle but I begged, screamed and borrowed and finally some kind person gave in. It was my best friends sisters boyfriend. I guess it sounds a bit daft but he had taken his BSA Bantam 125cc to bits with a rebuild in mind. That challenged us a lot, and he told us that if we wanted to get it back together and get it started we could keep it. Well, between me and my mate we got it going and modified it into a scrambler, a very crude old bike but still there was no going to Honda or KTM to buy one in those days. It was not long before other older boys bough the bike from us and we converted another with a 175cc BSA Bantam and sold that one.
At that time there were plenty of old BSA ex post office or military bikes going cheap so we had a good few years modifying old bikes and selling them before the big boys started making them, again. Over the next few years I had a succession of new professional bikes, like the Montessa, Ossa, Bultaco, Suzuki, Yamaha – I guess you can call me an off road nut. Then came the dark days of off roading. I got married and had a son, in that order. But I could not afford to play on the bikes since I was a family man now. My bike lay in the garage and I would not sell that last one love for all the money in the world.
By now my boy was 3 and Santa comes with everything I ever wanted but it’s all for my boy. From then on he has a succession of off road bikes and within 2 years my old bike is out of the garage and we go everywhere together. Still he gets all the new motor bikes from a very small boy until he became a young man - and I get to keep my old Montessa.
So we skip a few years - my son is competing in motocross and endure and I do a few competition and eventually I have to get a myself a new bike because the new bikes are just so good, the old bikes were fun but nowhere near competitive (my old montessa is still in the back of my garage though). Anyway after a few years talking about it and watching the Dakar series on TV we hatched a plan. Now we have just sold our business and semi retirement is on the cards! We have a few pennies in the bank and a few investments things are looking good, so I get Mark, my son, to ask mum if we can go enter the Dakar together - the answer was unusual. You are not riding those bloody bikes across Africa (that’s what I expected) but my son said to mum “Does that mean we can we go in a car then?”. That stopped her in her tracks, next answer well I will think about it! If he got her there, the answer always came back “yes”. She just dragged it out a bit and made us suffer for a little while. Eventually she told me that Mark wants to do the Dakar! “Really?” I said all innocent while she kept on saying to me “You have always talked about wanting to do it. Why don’t you go, take Mark in a rally car and do it together?”. My answer was: “Well, I would love to but it will cost a lot of money are you sure it’s ok?”. She looked at me and said that it’s a one time thing - life is not a reursal. We did not expect to attend this great adventure more than once.
So here we are 2 off road nuts, only any experience in off road bikes, run our own garage business for the last 18 years, knew a lot about cars and engines. I had driven on nearly every motor car race circuit in England at one time or another on these track days, but I had never been off road in any rally car, Land Rover or other 4x4.
Now we had a new task, a good job I had the time to do some research. We had to find something to drive, so I wanted a 4x4 racer for in the sand, I did not fancy the rear wheel drive for that job. We got some training, took rally lesions at a rally school and took some off road Land Rover courses close to home.
Then we had to work out how we were going to do the Dakar, because the only advice I could get was: “The French are not interested in the English, don’t do it unless you have £500,000 to spend (which I certainly did not have). It’s way too dangerous, and so on and so forth”. A lot of negative stuff but, being the off road nuts that we were, all that only made us more determined.
I though to myself: “Shit or bust, I will call T.S.0 (the organizers of the Dakar at that time)!!!!”. After several messages left on the French answer phone, eventually someone that could speak English rang me back. It was a very nice and helpful woman who I spoke to on several occasions over the following year to get to my 1st Dakar. She told me that she would help me with all the paperwork, and true to her word, she was a great help.
Eventually I also found some guy who had a 1988 Land Rover 110 4.6L V8, built by Land Rover France for the Dakar. this particular truck had sat in his garage for some time now and was one of only two that had been built. So I thought “O.K. it should be good, they should know what they are doing!”. Then we spent another £35k getting an experienced off road company to prepare this landrover and another £40k at the race. So £75k got us through the 1st Dakar along with loads and loads of on-the-go repairs! Several things stood out to me quite quickly on the car and what happened in the event.
The main point is that even with the best cars in the world, you really need good assistance/ support, both on the race track and in the bivouac at night, trying to do the general servicing on your own even when you know what your doing, is too much work after a 14 - 18 hour day driving. Even the little jobs are so difficult after days of little to no sleep.
You really need to take a wide range of spares (the smallest item that you do not take could be the thing that sends you home). People cannot carry everything you may need for yourself unless you have your own assistance truck and very deep pockets. I guess you may say that you need some good mechanics that are good to drive 600miles in the day then work on your car at night.
You also need some spare parts on the race track and again it’s expensive to have one for yourself. So now I see why they said we’d be needing £500,000 to do the Dakar in the proper fashion.
I started to think, look at all those privateers’ working all night like me on their own, if only we had the same car and shared a couple of trucks between 6 of us then that £500 could be down to 70k or 80k each. If we can get a few sponsors maybe even get it down a bit more. And a lot of the guys I had talked to spent a lot more than that and still had to do their own work.
The Land Rover, what to say about that one? In short it was not made for the job and to make it worthwhile it was going to cost too much money for me.
It was way too heavy (so we looked at ways to reduce weight) and we thought about junking lots of stuff and replace lots of panels with carbon fiber but that was going to cost loads ( cheapest way was to junk the body and chassis and go along with a space frame and fiber glass panels)
The suspension did not have enough travel and was too hard since we had used a standard Land Rover twin shocker setup with + 2” lift (So we looked at 12” long travel fox shockers to fit in with the FIA regulations) keeping original type springs but with about + 4”
The tires that were recommended to us were of little consequence for the desert, a military tube type sand tire. (You get millions of thorns in the tire, which keep working their way through and puncturing the tube time and time again. We went with tubeless BFG ATs since at least with tubeless the tires stay inflated for a long time even with the thorns still stuck in them.
The fuel consumption of a V8 was hopeless in the desert – you would have to carry enough fuel to drive 880 kms on one tank, in order to comply with the FIA regulations ( also using petrol you had to preorder all the fuel you expected to need during the race and get it delivered to the bivouac each night). It was very expensive and what you did not use you left behind, so for the future car we opted for a diesel engine 60% better on fuel but less power. Less power but when your petrol car carries 450 liter of fuels and your diesel carry’s 215ltrs the weight makes it better in the sand, and you can buy ok diesel all over Africa. The fuel bill for a petrol car then was 10k Euros for a diesel it cost 1.8k Euros. I also found that my driving speed on most tracks was the same. Both engines would take me faster than I felt safe enough to drive at.
Also, the V8 ran far too hot in the sand, under load with a full fuel tank was like driving a speed boat that just cannot get on the top of the water and glide. We fitted bigger twin fanned in the rear of the car to avoid the mud in the early stages and keep the seed from the long grass on the savanna from blocking the rad.
Jacking the 110 out of the deep sand when it was full of fuel was a real task, so on the later cars we fitted hydraulic jacks that would lift the car at the push of a button.
The old truck was clearly not reliable enough - every day and night I was fixing something! So for all future events cars would have everything swapped, replaced or rebuilt. If there was any doubt about is part good enough for Dakar, my answer is if you have to ask it’s no good. You have to be 100% sure then it’ll be ok.
So by the time the list of improvements was finished, I looked through it and decided it would be better to build a new car from scratch for the following year.
For this I approach a few companies in the UK that were making off road cars which we could work with and make a new prototype car, with view to building several cars to make a team and rent the cars out for the Dakar rally. With these, other big desert races as well, something not previously available for the amateur off road race drivers.
The only company or person that showed any interest was Drew Bowler who at that time was making the Tomcat car but was extremely interested in collaborating to make this new car, so with a lot of input from myself and Drew eventually the 1st car the Wildcat 200 came out of the workshop and straight to the start line with no time to spare and completed its 1st ever race - it needed a few modifications for the next year but all in all it was great. We had a good, sound, strong, reliable car for the amateurs to attack the Dakar in - not a car that was planned to win the big boys, but give amateurs a better chance of finishing the toughest race around.
R.T.: As I understand, the 1998 Dakar revealed the fact that English speaking countries had little to no participation in the raid due to lack of sponsorship and mind blowing budget. Can you recall what was it exactly that inspired you to start the company? What’s the story behind it?
Paul: At the time we started the Dakar it was hard for the English speaking guys to get to the start of the event never mind the finish. No one could tell us anything, but after our 1st Dakar we did a story in one of the Land Rover magazines, telling people about our adventure. Lots of people e-mailed me and asked questions and I did what I could to answer them.
Alas a few people said that they would love to do the Dakar but did not have the time, so I said as long as they pay their share I would help them with paperwork hotels and general advice. That escaladed into putting entire teams together for several groups on bikes or in cars from all over the world. My long term dream from the beginning was to have 1 type of car and 1 type of bike and for everyone to work together as a team sharing facilities and spare parts. If you work together you can have a professional team with race trucks and support trucks with mechanics, and some of the best equipment for desert racing available at a fraction of the money spent in the works teams.
Working with mechanics for all over the world also brings together many great minds, many “one guy is stuck with a new problem” but by widening the pool of mechanics it’s surprising what came to the table in the end. We moved away from working with Bowler after a couple of years because things did not go along has planned, so we had to start building our own car (the desert Warrior) named that after the local press kept referring to my son and I the desert warriors. We opted for more powerful diesel engines from the Range Rover 3lt TD6 but then continued our development on the BMW 3ltr x5 engine. We also moved away from the Discovery coil springs and moved to coil over shockers that can be more finely tuned for racing (a mode we have made for several of the Bowler Wildcats), we mainly used the fox 12” travel x 2 ½” dia shocker, and for the guys who had more money to play with we introduced the Reiger shocker - specially made shocker for our new desert warrior, tested and adjusted by the Reiger team during a weeklong testing in morocco.
R.T.: What was your first design? Did you begin with the Desert Warrior concept car which you perfected or was there a previous raid truck?
Paul: Looks like I jumped the gun a bit, the 1st car design I worked on was the Wildcat 200. I took all the specification to Drew Bowler for the car I worked with, to build a few cars with the view to make a batch to rent out for the Dakar. Drew agreed to do this as long as he could sell the cars to other people in England and Europe for off-road racing. The Dakar side took off better than we expected but many people still wanted to use petrol engine cars. That’s not where I wanted to go. Also I wanted to do more modification to the car but Drew was reluctant so, we moved away to make our own Desert Warrior along the same lines as the Wildcat with a longer wheel base and + 2” more track, it is mainly to complete the Dakar and other raids, longer wheel base gives better stability at high speeds on the track, we also now do a short wheel base kit car aimed at the European type short course of road racing. The 1st time out in our Desert Warrior we were the 3 highest placed privateer in the Dakar entered in the diesel class and 24th overall. So we were very happy with that, all the other work to improve the cars has been slight mods every year to improve small items rather than any big new ideas, the plan is to improve what we have if possible.
After a lot of pressure from customers we built our 1st two prototype independent suspension Dakar cars with even longer wheel base and wider track, the maiden race was the Lisbon to Dakar the year it was cancelled, that was a blow but they went to the central European rally the following June then they went on to do Dakar is south America.
One truck crashed badly, the guys missed a 90 degree bend in the dust and both guys ended up been flown out in a chopper and spent quite some time in hospital. I have to say they are both fit and well and that seeing the boys at their accident slowed us down for some time. Personally I would recommend the solid axels type desert warrior for most amateurs since the solid axel type cars are far stronger and you can make many more mistakes and still drive away. The independent suspension car can take the tracks much faster and gives you a feeling of great control. But when you make a mistake you are going so much faster it’s difficult to avoid a big crash.
R.T.: Who designs them? Do you also work the engineering part of the business as well as the management aspects?
Paul: Yes we do our own designing as well as our own testing of the products. We don’t just go thinking “Oh this looks good. Let’s stick it on the car and hope it’ll run ok”. Lots of people say we should do this or do that because that’s how they build for racing in their type of racing, but the Dakar is special and needs building differently, the armed forces around the world all understand you need special tools for each job, not just a ship, airplane or car.
I still do lot of the logistics, the driving to and from events and paperwork, we do it for fun and for the sport. I don’t earn any wages from the racing but I spend 60 to 80 hours a week on the job because I love it and I am fortunate not to have to earn, the workshop is staffed with 4 very experienced mechanics who do earn their livelihoods from the racing, and we have a armada of mechanic who have been with us at various races at one time or another from all over the world who are volunteers, they don’t get paid any wages but they are dedicated and passionate about what we do.
R.T.: What services do you provide exactly? Say I have a sum of money. How would we decide what to fit on a possible truck and why? Do you have a list of possible specs?
Paul: Unlike some other race car manufactures we really only have 1 Dakar race car, the Desert Warrior. It is designed specifically for the Dakar and does the job well. Going back to my earlier bit about the armed forces - one car does not fit all jobs, the only thing we offer is to upgrade the shockers from fox to Reiger, and to upgrade the brakes from a standard size Land Rover braking system to some larger cross drilled and vented discs with 6 pot calipers. Both are only changed for ego (as one of the customers said it’s a manhood thing - mine is bigger than yours) and are not going to improve the drivers overall position in the Dakar.
If a customer feels a need to change something we may change the product, after asking them why and we may explain why we do what we do. Obviously one of the main things about keeping the cars similar is spares available during the race.
There are 2 types of services,
Clients can have either service or both, depending on the client’s budget. We also do training and testing in morocco for clients who have never been in the sand dunes before, we also take clients to some of the smaller events to see if it’s something they really would like to do. We also do the morocco rally or Dubai rally in March, depending on clients, then we usually go to morocco or Egypt in October, depending on clients.
R.T.: How did you find building cars to FIA standards? Of what I know, the Dakar trucks have very specific attributes, with difficult to meet requirement – how big of a challenge was that?
Paul: When we 1st started to enter the Dakar in the 110 the FIA regulations scared the shit out of me, the application for the Dakar says if you fail the technical check up you go home and lose all your money. It’s all a case of reading the regulations every year since they are consistently changing them, I still worry about the regs until the cars have cleared scrutineering, so far we have not had a major problem, building the cars to meet the regulations is not difficult its finding out all the regulation that’s the hard part.
I suppose that the people who dream of owning or just racing in a Dakar truck come from all possible areas, from plumbers to managers. What kind of people walk in your shop, asking for a race truck – are there any typologies?
Most of our customers come from people we meet in the Dakar itself. It’s not often someone will drop in the shop and buy a Dakar truck or package but we do get people calling the shop and buying the kit cars, we do a FIA frame with a set of panels that’s the same wheel base as the bowler wildcat 106”. We get a lot of people calling in to look at that and talk a lot and eventually come back and buy one, they only need our kit and a Discovery or other old off road racer and they are good to start. When it come to selling Dakar trucks & packages it tends to be people who are already racing in the Dakar for the 1st time with something standardish with lots of money spent but absolutely wrong (like my 110) they will take once or twice in the rally and ask to come to the shop for a visit! 99% of those customers have already spent a lot of money on something that’s not up to the job and will order a car or package for Dakar.
These people usually have lots of money or are very good drivers with good sponsors. A lot of the people who we mail to start things moving and have not been to the Dakar before find out that it’s too expensive and they need sponsors to complete the job. This usually ends up with a starter but take a lot of time for both the potential clients and myself. But I can talk Dakar all day so it’s great for me.
R.T.: I read a bit about the T4/T5 MAN truck that you enter in the race, acting as an assistance truck for other cars (apart from your Ford 350 trucks that do the same, but in assistance conditions) – I think that’s a brilliant idea. Have you had any intention on expanding your services towards this truck area?
Paul: Let me explain T5, assistance = any 4x4, 6x6, 8x8, car or truck that carries spare parts and/or mechanics from the bivouac (camping site) to the next bivouac, and usually the trucks will be mobile workshops with generators, lights, welding equipments, tools and so on.
T4 is a smaller race truck that will have a small range of spare parts, it will also be a mobile workshop and will have 3 competent mechanics on board, any client in any trouble would flag down for assistance on the race track.
R.T.: Who drives your truck and is there any plan to have it up on the podium?
Paul: The race truck is only there for the clients in the rally cars, if they did end up with a podium finish then it looks like we must have lost our race cars, which is not in my plans, the truck is driven by one of my staff.
I am not planning on racing trucks to win, but that’s not to say if a truck company came along and said they would like me to put a team together for them to win the Dakar I would do that, I could put the right people in the right trucks but it’s always about money.
R.T.: Tell me a little more about your line of products, specifically the XLR kit truck. Is it a complete kit, or do you adapt it to a Defender chassis for instance?
Paul: The kit car is our base model, it is run on the same type of chassis as the Desert Warrior but is 4” shorter and runs with the Defender style front and rear end. It’s an FIA approved frame, and uses fiberglass body work. If you have a Discovery and are handy in the workshop you can build your own car and could 1st build it to do local events, then later upgrade it to full Dakar spec but you do most of the work yourself, its a car where we have done veering degrees of builds from supplying a frame and body work to a complete car FIA ready.
R.T.: I understand the spearhead of your production is still the Desert Warrior, which has been participating in the Dakar for some years now. What can you tell me about your latest and greatest project, the D4 – WN2? I understand you saw through the whole 2009 Argentina – Chile Dakar Series in that vehicle. How is it better than its predecessor?
Paul: Well as you seem to have noticed we are building a new desert warrior D4-WN2 - it’s the new independent suspension Desert Warrior 2. We did take 2 to the Dakar in South America, of which one had a major crash not far into the race. This taught us that we should drive with out head not our feet but the new D4-WN2 is a longer and wider car that gives an extremely fast and comfortable drive. It really feels too safe for this type of event and encourages you to drive much faster that you may require to safely stop or avoid obstacles. The engine is much lower and much farther back than the original Desert Warrior.
The idea of this car is to provide a car and services for the professional driver with a much larger budget. There would be fewer cars in the team for the independent car and more service crew. But it will increase the Dakar price significantly. The BMW 3ltr diesel engine provides a huge amount of torque and power and the only real way to utilize this power is to increase the strength of the gearbox, diffs and drive shafts so the new car is a natural development of the diesel engine.
The original one is still my car of choice for the Dakar amateur, it’s strong and reliable and will certainly go faster than most guys can drive. However for that one off driver with special talents and a big budget it’s a car that can do well.
R.T.: Can you please provide me with a list of prices for the services you provide? Say I’d like to hire you guys with a Desert Warrior and assistance for the Dakar period. How much am I looking at and what would that include? I am well aware it’s a rather expensive event to take part in, so I suppose the price tag for hiring the professionals to have your back is one of the best things you can do.
Paul: For any of you guys thinking of entering the Dakar be it on a motorcycle or in a car you should have the best backup you can afford. At the very least join a team and work with them, you will get a lot more for your money, yes it will cost a lot, but if you try it once on the cheap (which is still a lot of money) I am sure the second time you try you will take my advice.
As for the cost:
For your information, the year the Dakar was canceled we had the largest private team to enter the Dakar rally.
Our team consisted of:
It’s a lot of work but it’s been great fun.
