A new litter of desert foxes
Dakar 2026 |
Stage 1 |
YANBU
> YANBU
January 4
th
2026
- 20:34
[GMT + 3]
Four decades ago, the Marreau brothers —Claude and Bernard— won the 1982 Dakar and earned the sobriquet "desert foxes" for their wild adventures in the early years of the event. Another pair of brothers, Thierry and Laurent Campos, entered the Dakar Classic in an R18 built in the same spirit and have already had some ups and downs.
Talk about a blast from the past. Paying Thierry and Laurent Campos a visit is like being transported to 1983 and standing face to face with an R18 straight out of a bivouac in Touggourt, Djanet or Agadez as the Marreau brothers open a can of sardines. As it happens, that is precisely what the Campos brothers, who hail from Paris, were going for when they embarked on a three-year adventure to build the Renault Break 4×4 they signed up for the Dakar Classic. "Our parents used to race cars, so we watched it as little kids. They used to bring us to the Trocadéro, so we probably used to play with little replicas of the Marreau brothers' cars in our bedroom", recalls the younger one, Thierry, who grew up to become a car mechanic.
Still children at heart, they also joined the caravan, spreading their old-school spirit enthusiastically and delightfully. Their Saudi adventure is all about self-reliance. Somewhere among workshop trucks and state-of-the-art motorhomes is the tiny 5×5 footprint of their car, with nothing but a tarpaulin, a toolbox and a pallet jury-rigged into a workbench. Minimalism is a philosophy that suits them to a T: "It's a different way of doing things. We came here to find our way forward, not to have an easy time. We've been hauling the spare parts along for three days. Our tent is the only thing that stays in the bivouac. This might give us an edge. For us, every day is basically a marathon stage!".
Thierry and Laurent are like campers on a lark and are not aiming to make it to a specific point in the race. Their experience in the first stage was a reminder that they should take the next two weeks one day at a time. A broken accelerator cable 138 km into the special took an hour to fix on the track. Just a wake-up call to confirm a humble approach is their best bet… as is a sense of humour: "We never drove the car before coming here. It went from Santa Susanna to Barcelona and from the port in Yanbu to this place. We ran no tests at all. You're not allowed to drive on the beach in Brittany, so it had never even felt the touch of sand before. We brought what seemed best, but we know one day we won't have the part we need and will have to figure something out. It worked out today, we lost some time and exited the special, but we know if a rear half axle comes off, it's curtains for us. We hope to make it to the finish, but loads of people have come up short on their first try. It seemed too easy, so we made it harder for us! We're doing this the old-fashioned way."
