“Nuts about the Dakar”

The name of his Facebook and Instagram pages says it all: Nuts4Dakar. Yes, clearly Stuart Gregory, the South African macadamia nut farmer is ‘nuts’ about the Dakar. Sufficiently so to come back for a fourth time to race the Original by Motul class. The first time in 2019 he went out on the 10th day in Peru with a mechanical problem. ‘Obviously’ he had to come back to get a finish, which he did the following year with a more than respectable 66th place overall. You would have thought that might have been ‘job done’. Stuart certainly did, vowing never to return… Until his Dakar addiction got the better of him and he found himself filling out his entry form for the 2022 edition. With almost metronomic regularity he finished the last edition 65th overall (13th in Malle Moto). For 2023 he was planning to treat himself to an assisted entry but a sponsor pulled out at the last minute and the budget went with it…

“It would have been nice to have had the ‘luxury’ of going with a team but with my sponsor pulling out I just couldn’t justify the extra cost. It might have allowed me to improve my result but being realistic I’m never going to be much faster than I have been however many times I enter. I do however have a new challenge -I’m in the veteran class now so a top 3 in that category would be good… But for me the principle pleasure is to be out in the desert and navigate with the road book. I train with Ross Branch, Bradley Cox and Charan Moore and we all get along and have great fun on the bikes but those guys are quick. Back home in South Africa I’ve started doing a bit of co-driving -those car drivers like to have us bikers in the passenger seat ‘cos we can read the terrain’. I’d like to get a bit more navigation experience under my belt and then maybe come back in a car on the Dakar. Let’s see how this one goes. I’ve got a feeling its going to be a tough one…”