Tucked inside a southeast Calgary garage, a grey Ford Raptor is being built to make history.
The vehicle belongs to The Gear Shop Technical Motorsport Team, now the first and only Canadian team ever to qualify for both the punishing Rallye du Maroc, and the legendary Dakar Rally.
Driver and Shop founder, Nathan Hayashi, compares his team to the 1993 comedy Cool Runnings. Only in the opposite, as The Gear Shop Technical Motorsport Team (GSTM) is leaving the cold to race in sand dunes across the world.
Now, the team has its sights set on the seven-day race, Rallye du Maroc, taking place from October 10 to 17.
Earlier this year, GSTM’s 2nd-place overall finish, and class win at the Sonora Rally in Mexico, secured their spot on the international stage.
While Hayashi is the team’s driver and often their public face, GSTM is far from a one-man operation. The crew also includes a navigator and multiple engineers and mechanics, all working to keep GSTM competitive.
“It’s a team sport, even if there’s only one person in the driver’s seat,” Hayashi said.
For GSTM, the road to Dakar has been bumpy.
Hayashi believes the difficulty and detail needed to qualify are the main reason why no Canadian team has previously done so.
“Every step of the way, we’re finding challenges. One, to race in Dakar, there are some things that they want you to do. They want to make sure that we’re not going to just go there and represent Dakar not in a good way, and represent the country not in a good way,” he said.
“Two, they have to allow a certain vehicle to race. So for us, we have this Ford Bronco Raptor, that’s been incredible, but it’s a difficult process for them to allow it to race. There’s a lot of rules and regulations with [Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile], it wasn’t until last week that we were given the okay for this car to race.”
Canada Joins the Race: GSTM Qualifies for Dakar and Morocco
The Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile (FIA) governs many motorsport races across the world, including the world’s most prominent motorsport series Formula One.
If the car is unfit for a single qualification, the team can easily be sent back home right before the race, said Hayashi.
“Maybe people have to be a little less smart,” he joked.
“Maybe there’s something wired wrong in our brains that makes us think this is a good idea.”
On top of the financial cost, racing takes a large physical toll, even away from the track.
“When you want to step outside of the norm of a nine-to-five, unfortunately, time becomes your second job, and you have to push yourself to crazy hours, crazy times to accomplish what you want,” said Hayashi, whose hours at the shop can vary from 12-to-18 hours daily.
Hayashi and the team are very aware that they are the first Canadians to qualify for the upcoming races, stating that they want to represent the country in the best possible light.
“We’re proud to be Canadians, and having something that Canada doesn’t have a really strong presence in, like that at Dakar, for us, it’s like Go Canada. We see that with hockey, we see that with the Olympics,” Hayashi said.
He said the Dakar and Morocco race were the world stage with every country represented there—except for Canada until now.
Come October, Hayashi intends to bring Canadian competitive spirit to the track.
“Having wonderful sportsmanship to other competitors, having the Canadian spirit, that fighting spirit, but still being very nice about it,” he said.
