Various teams of the Dakar Classic have been affected

It hurts us to give this news, but following our commitment with responsability and transparency we must write these next lines.

The Blunik-Raid device, which was renovated in both software and hardware during 2020, has a bug which has been detected during the 2021 Dakar Classic rally.

The teams of the 2021 Dakar Classic who placed their trust in Blunik, have been sportingly affected in the regularity tests. We know that Dakar is much more than regularity, but the Blunik device was intended to offer them the best in this aspect, and it has not been so. Our reaction can be none other than to refund everyone who has been affected.

The software bug is in the electronic part’s operating system and it randomly affects the calculations made by the Blunik’s internal pyramid, in consequence numerical errors can appear in the regularity following data.

Obviously this bug will be fixed in the next version of the Blunik-Raid.

What’s more, at Blunik we will continue improving and evolving our software as we have been doing with all our co-pilot and timing devices for over 14 years.

Blunik-Raid is not only a pyramid, it’s a device made out of three parts:

1) The Intelligent Antenna, which measures distance with the maximum number of satelites possible, an also synchronizes the clock.

2) The Blunik and its internal calculation pyramid, the part that calculates the regularity tables with average speed changes.

3) Adapted functionalities for raids and specialy to the Dakar Classic. Parameters, start function, average speed programming, calibration, distance adjustment functions, etc.

There is a lot of hard work invested in a device like the Blunik-Raid, many hours, many tests, many improvements and many corrected errors.

To top it off, this year has been unusual for us all, with Covid, mobility restrictions, uncertainties, new situations, etc. Even so we are proud to have motivated ourselves to develop a device for the Dakar Classic and to have contributed to this first edition, which we already know has been a success.