I remember him sitting up on the deck of the supply truck, smoking and watching the rest of the assembled out here in the dunes outside Dubai.

I was there with a handful of reporters to test the cars last year, but I couldn’t figure out exactly what he did. He wasn’t a mechanic. He wasn’t a photographer. He wasn’t an official or a designer or a navigator. He definitely did not take what was in front of him too seriously, interrupting a little interview I was attempting with one of X-Raid engineers.

The engineer, a Spanish guy, was telling me every little technical detail of the all-wheel-drive carbon-over-steel race trucks that had won the toughest raid in the world, the Dakar Rally, some months before. He had gone over so many details, shown me so many unexplained compartments and levers and switches, that I admitted I didn’t know what else to ask.

“Ask him,” the smoking German said from his perch, gesturing with his cigarette, “about his illegitimate children.”

The Spaniard laughed. It was like the burden of consequences didn’t quite reach out here into the dunes, even with the watchful state of Dubai hovering just past the horizon. He left, and I walked up to talk to the mysteriously relaxed German.

It turns out he was , something of a water carrier for the rest of the team, fast-hauling spare parts near the front runners. Why he was at this event I do not entirely know. But race trucks were there and so was he.