The Dakar Rally has had nothing to do with the Senegalese capital for a long time. Only until 2007, under the name Rallye Paris-Dakar, did it lead from the French capital through several African countries to Dakar. It was finally relocated to South America in 2009 due to terrorist threats, before taking place for the first time in Saudi Arabia in 2020. What remained, however, are the technical challenges and the unpredictability of the rally for the participants. Because unlike in a classic rally, the route is not precisely specified. Instead, there are individual GPS waypoints for navigation and checkpoints where drivers must appear. The exact routing is left to the pilots and their co-drivers. Not only experience and precise work are required here, but also a portion of luck: Many top drivers have already lost a lot of time looking for checkpoints or because they entered particularly impassable terrain.
This time, navigation is made more difficult by the fact that the route has been changed for this year. 70 percent are new territory. While in the past three years in Saudi Arabia, twelve special stages over twelve days resulted in a kind of circuit inland, this time it’s a coast-to-coast route from the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf. This extends both the overall duration and the length of the Dakar Rally: this year there are 14 special stages over 14 days. The participants cover a distance of 8,549 kilometers. More than half of them – 4,706 kilometers – are special stages. A special highlight is the return of the participants to the so-called Empty Quarter in the south-east of Saudi Arabia. The landscape of this desert area, which alone is the size of France, is characterized by towering dunes. From a sporting point of view, the section of the rally is so demanding that the drivers are not allowed to receive any external support from their teams overnight. In the event of damage to the vehicle, a talent for improvisation is required.
On January 1st, the actual desert rally begins at Sea Camp in Yanbu on the west coast. With a day’s rest on January 9th, the hunt continues until January 15th, where it ends in Dammam on the Persian Gulf. Beforehand, on December 31, there will be a ten-kilometer prologue in which the 365 participating vehicles can warm up. The number of vehicles is also a new record. They are divided into five classes, including for motorcycles and trucks. However, as every year, the main focus is on cars in the T1 class. They are the fastest and they compete for overall victory. In this country, it is mostly the brands that are known, less the heroes who sit in the driver’s and passenger’s seat. The “big names” among the drivers include former world rally champions Carlos Sainz (Audi) and Sebastien Loeb (Prodrive), ex-DTM star Mattias Ekström (Audi), Le Mans winner Romain Dumas (Rebellion-Toyota) and the undisputed record winner of the Dakar Rally, the eight-time winner Stéphane Peterhansel (Audi).
It is almost impossible for one of the private teams to win the Dakar Rally – the effort put in by the Toyota and Audi factory teams is too high. However, it is quite possible that there will be stage victories for the outsiders: if everything runs smoothly and others are held up by navigation errors or technical problems, their hour comes. Sven Quandt’s German X-Raid team, for example, expects such opportunities. As a former team partner of Mini, X-Raid has further developed the all-wheel drive compact SUV so that it is eligible to start in the T1 class, the top passenger car league, so to speak. For example, the Mini JCW Rally Plus got a wider track. The Bahrain Xtreme Team (BRX), which uses an off-road monster called Hunter in the T1 class, is not the hottest contender for overall victory, although it may have a hot vehicle. It is created by the British racing experts Prodrive and has a real expert at the wheel in Sebastien Loeb. Despite the strong sponsorship from Bahrain, it would be a surprise and, more importantly, a humiliation for Audi and Toyota should a BRX car win.
The main focus this year is on the duel between Audi and Toyota, each with three works cars. The Japanese armada is also flanked by a number of customer vehicles. Not only do two corporations collide, but also two vehicle concepts. Toyota starts with the Hilux at the T1. At least on the outside, the pickup is reminiscent of the production model, from which it is of course technically miles away. The Japanese bring a lot of experience from rallying and off-road sport and have already won the marathon twice – most recently in 2022 with Nasser Al-Attiyah at the wheel. Another plus for the team is the extensive Dakar experience of all pilots. And last but not least, it is the mature, constantly evolving vehicle that hardly causes any technical problems.
In contrast, Audi is the declared attacker, but no longer an outsider. After a few teething problems, the 2022 debut ended up in ninth place overall, as well as a few stage wins. For 2023, not only has the practical reliability been improved, but the biggest shortcoming has been eliminated: the previous overweight. However, the biggest unknown with the Audi RS Q e-tron E2 is its drive, more precisely its classification compared to T1. The Ingolstadt models – classified as T1U – have an all-electric drive, in which the power is generated on-board by a former DTM engine. This makes their handling incomparably good, especially in the dunes, because the high torque is available at any time and spontaneously. Even if there are many unknowns at the Dakar Rally, one thing is certain: the dispute over the classification of T1U (Audi) versus T1 (Toyota in the lead) is inevitable.
