Over the last two months Toyota has been planning for the eventuality that two-time Formula 1 champion Fernando Alonso will decide to contest the Dakar Rally. Alonso - who won the Le Mans 24 Hours with Toyota last year - is expected to test a Dakar-spec Gazoo Racing South Africa Hilux within the next month, after contesting the Daytona 24 Hours with Wayne Taylor Racing.

Toyota's Japanese HQ has contacted Glyn Hall, the team principal of its South African-based cross-country rally raid project, and he has been working on a plan in case Alonso wants to enter the Dakar.

Some footage from the first week of the 2019 Rally Raid in Peru that has not been published yet.

Also our personal observation after week 1: Not wanting to take away from the sport per se yet adding up the facts that #Dakar2019 is only in 1 country (are the other countries as Argentina, Chile, Bolivia are tired to pay millions of $'s with no tangible ROI?), barely breaks 5000km on length and has only 10 stages plus the prior the race interview with Overdrive Motorsports Racing CEO Jean Marc Fortin ( ASO "robbing participants" with high fees / https://r.sa-seo.com/JeanMarcFortin ) the Nicola Dutto story (https://youtu.be/MnR8hqv-tsY), the road-book mess ups that screwed everyone the other day and have Loeb threatening to never come back our own experience with extreme unjustified trademark bullying ASO is starting to look like a 2 bit operation instead of the world renowned organization they once were.

For Hero MotoSports Team Rally, it was an emotional day as the news of crashes kept coming out from the stage. The first casualty for the team came in the form of rider C S Santosh, who suffered a nasty crash between the waypoint 4 and 5, rendering him incapable of pursuing the stage further. This unfortunate crash brought a premature end to his attempt to conquer a record 5th Dakar by an Indian. His condition is stable and he is currently being attended to by the medical team at a hospital in Tacna.

Today’s stage was quite fast with all the riders going flat out in waves of 10 in a motocross style start. The presence of fesh-fesh severely impaired the visibility for the riders coming at the back, and stones hidden away in the course of the route made it even more dangerous.