It’s 20°C and there isn’t a cloud in the sky – although that’s to be expected in Saudi Arabia in January. James Elson packs his T-shirts to follow the dune duels of the 2022 Dakar Rally

Busy mechanic of Moma Raid, which ran a Fiat Panda 4x4 and Pegaso truck.

BRX Hunter T1+ of Sébastien Loeb; this was his sixth Dakar

Qatari driver Nasser Al-Attiyah took his fourth Dakar win, and his second for Toyota, in the Hilux

Damaged Scania truck of Dakarspeed

Bivouac-y racers: the moving city at Dakar’s second stage following a desert downpour.

Hot work for Argentinian rider Kevin Benavides

Chile’s Francisco López Contardo was first in the Light Prototypes category in this Can-Am XRS.

THE ELDERLY SPANISH-SPEAKING couple I’m sharing the 4x4 with start to fret. I’m not in the best frame of mind either. Our local driver doesn’t seem unduly bothered though, and despite urges from my companions for him to change direction, he takes us along what to all intents and purposes is the racing line through the desert from one Dakar Rally spectator viewing point to another – while the stage is live.

Hearing the high-pitched whining of a turbo, I peer out the dusty back window of our Toyota Land Cruiser to see an off-road prototype bearing down on us at some rate of knots as dust plumes up behind it.

“Turn left!” I tell the driver, who finally acquiesces, with the top-class Dakar Rally competitor thundering past us shortly after, a little too close for comfort. Our driver then returns back to his original line, as if nothing had ever happened.

A little earlier, we witnessed Sébastien Loeb and Nasser Al-Attiyah tear through the arid landscape side by side as they duelled for the lead, and not long later we’ll see a gigantic Kamaz truck driver barely take his foot off the throttle as he threads through a 100-strong herd of camels.

It’s only just past noon on my first day at the weird, wonderful and sometimes worrying Dakar Rally, where the truly extraordinary becomes an everyday occurrence for two weeks, this year between January 1 and 14.

Described by Loeb’s Prodrive boss David Richards as “the Everest of motor sport”, the event is arguably the most intense and gruelling driving challenge in the world – 5000 miles in total, with 2500 of those run as competitive ‘special stages’ through Saudi Arabia’s unforgiving desert terrain. Drivers negotiate gigantic boulders on some tests and towering sand dunes on the next.