DAKAR SPECIAL STAGE

Dakar Special Stage

A handful of Porsche 911 Dakar owners take to the Welsh hills to find out what their cars were really built for.

It all began in December of 2023, when Niels Schoenmakers founded the Dakar Owners Club to organise a community around Porsche’s then new off-road capable 911 variant. To his amazement, the club had gathered its first 100 members from all across Europe within just a few days. Since then, he’s been organising small scale day events all over the continent.

Being a rally driver, Schoenmakers wanted to host a more ambitious gathering that would give Dakar owners the chance to experience their cars in a more testing environment. For this he turned his gaze towards the dirt roads of Wales, a spiritual home for rally fans all over the world.

The 4 day event began at the Porsche Experience Centre in Silverstone, where the owners had the opportunity to safely understand the capabilities of the cars and gain confidence, each pairing with instructors who took them across the skid pan and the ice hill, teaching them to control slides in tricky conditions. By the end of the day, everyone was ready to make the journey west through the English countryside and into the wilder terrain of the famed Welsh hills.

Day 2 of the meet began with a forest rally stage, with each car taking the opportunity to make a recce run first, before being released onto the stage in 30 second intervals to try it out at speed. Then, the convoy moved on to the Sweet Lamb Motorsport Complex, which boasts 20 miles of Welsh gravel roads maintained specifically for rally testing. Some took their time to learn the course slowly, while others took it full on, sliding through all the corners and taking the jumps without hesitation. All the cars ended up equally dirty however, the best evidence of a day well spent.

Some took their time to learn the course slowly, while others took it full on, sliding through all the corners and taking the jumps without hesitation.

The final two days were much more relaxed, beginning with a drive from the Welsh countryside to Castle Combe, the Wiltshire village famed for both its beautiful stone buildings and a race circuit of the same name. There the drivers spoke with one another of the intense respect they’d built for these cars over the course of the trip, one remarking that they couldn’t imagine another car that could follow up a weekend of rally stages with 500 miles of travel so effortlessly.

Following a lunch stop on the final day, everybody went their separate ways, though not before a farewell of hugs and promises to share another Dakar adventure soon. It was as though we were witnessing the birth of a new Porsche subculture taking shape, one driven by the most unique car in the Porsche 911 lineup. Without a doubt, this isn’t the last we’ll hear from the Dakar Owners Club.