James Hillier begs wife not to allow him to race “brutal” Dakar again!
“It just seems to get tougher, but we fight on.”
James Hillier has credited the Dakar Rally organisers with increasing the difficulty on the 2025 edition of the rally.
The Dakar moved to Saudi Arabia in 2020 and since then has been criticised on occasion for lacking in difficulty compared to the original Paris-Dakar routes or the South American editions that ran until 2019.
However, with a 485km stage ahead of him at the beginning of the second week, TT regular Hillier – who previously contested the Dakar in 2023 in the solo Malle Moto class – took note of the challenge presented by the route of this year’s rally, after having been forced to sit out the second two days of the rally following an opening stage crash in which he broke his nose.
“It’s cold, windy; the sun is shining but it’s fresh this morning,” Hillier said ahead of Monday’s eighth stage of this year’s Dakar.
“We’ve just done liaison, I’m at the start of Stage 8 – it’s a 458km stage; it just seems to get tougher, but we fight on.
“Then, after the stage, it’s a 180km road ride back to the bivouac, so a long day.
“I can honestly say this is tough this year, they’ve [the organisers] really upped their game this year – it’s brutal.”
Hillier added a message to his wife, asking her to dissuade him from doing what he called “silly ideas” in the future.
“A quick message to my wife, who I haven’t spoken to probably enough in the last two weeks because I’ve been quite busy and [with] not a lot of internet, but I know you have somewhat given up trying to talk me out of these silly ideas,” he said.
“But I’m turning 40 this year and I’m asking you to please make a bit more effort into making me consider my choices and these silly ideas.”
Hillier was classified in 88th after the most recent Stage 10, won by South Africa’s Michael Docherty who currently leads the Rally 2 class.
The premier Rally GP class, and the rally overall, remains led by Australian Daniel Sanders with Spain’s Tosha Schareina 16 minutes adrift for Honda, and his French teammate Adrien van Beveren a further six minutes behind with two stages remaining.
Alex joined the Crash.net team in August of 2024 having covered consumer and racing motorcycle news at Visordown for two years.
