An old-school Dakar

Dakar 2026 | Stage 11 | BISHA > AL HENAKIYAH
January 15 ^th 2026 - 19:48 [GMT + 3]

For his sixth Dakar, Tiziano Interno decided to experience it like one of the pioneers on the most legendary of rally-raids, setting off from Paris and hauling around with him all his equipment and spare parts for his 450 KTM.

He is not the type of guy to do things like everyone else does. What’s more, for him, the Dakar is not a race like the others. This is why he has embarked on the production of a four-part documentary series that will be broadcast at the end of the year on Netflix. “I conducted a series of interviews with riders who made the Dakar the legend it is,” explains Tiziano Interno. “I also spoke with Thierry Sabine’s widow…” As a tribute is being paid this year to the inventor of the most famous rally-raid, who passed away forty years ago, the Italian decided to honour his memory in his own way. “For my sixth Dakar, I was looking for a new challenge,” admits the native of Brescia. “After a lot of thinking, I came up with the idea of reconnecting with the spirit of the Dakar pioneers, who set off from Paris to go to Africa, carrying everything they needed to complete the challenge on their motorbikes”. As a result, Tiziano left Milan with his race bike and travelled to Paris, before heading for Barcelona, the Dakar’s official port of embarkation for Saudi Arabia… all via off-road routes. He enrolled in the Original by Motul class and installed a pair of panniers on his KTM for carrying spare parts and consumables used to maintain his machine. “In the trunk that the organisers transport from one bivouac to another, the only thing that I left was my tyres and my tent,” he points out. Naturally, after eleven days of racing, his kit is somewhat lighter now: “I had 25 kilograms of luggage at the start but I have a lot less now. I still have a clutch, brake disks and levers, plus a little bit of oil. The bike is lighter now and more pleasant to ride”. With two days left before the finish in Yanbu, Tiziano Interno is enjoying a trouble-free rally so far. “I haven’t fallen or had mechanical problems,” he says happily. “What’s more, I haven’t made any big navigation mistakes”. This flawless performance has enabled him to reach the bivouac in Al Henakiyah in thirty-seventh place. This Dakar will also leave him with a memory that he is not ready to forget, as he explains: “On stage 7, I towed Bradley Cox for 30 km”. All he has to do now is to fulfil the promise he made to himself: to climb onto the finisher’s podium in Yanbu wearing the jersey of his friend Pone, who passed away two months ago due to cancer, which he has kept safely in his jacket since leaving Italy.