W2RC – New-look 47th Dakar Rally set to kick-start fourth W2RC season

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia plays host to the Dakar Rally for the sixth time from January 3rd-19th. Fifty registered FIA World Rally-Raid Championship (W2RC) contenders spearhead a massive entry on what promises to be one of the most difficult ever Dakar rallies and the fourth to be the opening round of the W2RC.

Starting with a Prologue stage near Bisha on January 3rd, competitors will tackle 12 gruelling desert stages that incorporate 5,145 competitive kilometres in a punishing route of 7,753km.

Toyota Gazoo Racing are the defending W2RC Manufacturers’ champions but face the might of Dacia and the Ford M-Sport teams on this occasion with X-raid Mini concentrating on the Drivers’ Championship. BBR Motorsport (Taurus), the G Rally Team and X-Raid will battle it out for honours in the Challenger category and the Can-Am Factory Team faces competition from Polaris in the SSV class.

Three Dacia Sandriders, four Ford Raptors and X-Raid Minis and seven Toyota Hiluxes top the list of 24 entrants eligible for the Ultimate W2RC category with MD Optimus and Century Racing also in the mix.

Nasser Saleh Al-Attiyah is a five-time winner of the event and the defending W2RC champion. He and co-driver Edouard Boulanger made the switch to the new Dacia Sandrider towards the end of 2024 and the Qatari clinched a third successive title – and a first with Boulanger – with victory at the Rally of Morocco on the car’s debut.

Nine-time WRC champion Sébastien Loeb has yet to fulfil his ambition of winning the event and drives a second car with Cristina Gutiérrez driving the third car. Loeb and navigator Fabian Lurquin finished second to Al-Attiyah in Morocco last October.

Defending the W2RC Manufacturers’ title for a fourth time could be even more challenging for Toyota Gazoo Racing on this occasion. Yazeed Al-Rajhi finished as the runner-up to Al-Attiyah in 2023 and 2024 and is joined by Brazilian Lucas Moraes and American former Challenger champion Seth Quintero to spearhead the Japanese manufacturer’s challenge with the latest version of the Toyota Hilux. The trio continue to team up with their regular navigators, Timo Gottschalk, Armand Monleón and Dennis Zenz.

Fine tuning and ongoing work has been carried out with the Toyota’s suspension in recent weeks and Al-Rajhi clinched an emphatic win in Jeddah shortly before Christmas in the final shakedown of the car before Dakar. Overdrive Racing’s Juan Cruz Yacopini and Rokas Baciuška are also registered for the Drivers’ Championship. The latter triumphed in the SSV category in 2022 and 2023 and stepped up for more success in Challenger last year.

Toyota Gazoo Racing also fields a DKR Hilux for Henk Lategan and a Hilux IMT Evo for Saood Variawa. Veteran South African Giniel de Villiers won the event outright with Volkswagen in 2009 and is also entered in an IMT Evo, but is not registered for the W2RC.

The X-Raid Mini JCW Team enjoyed a successful 2024 campaign across a wide range of Bajas and has a strong line-up to challenge for honours in 2025. Team principal Sven Quandt was a major part of Team Audi Sport’s Dakar success in 2024 and has worked on the development of a petrol engine for the Mini JCW Rally this year.

Guillaume de Mévius (second overall in 2024) and Denis Krotov will drive the two petrol-engined Minis, while the FIA World and European Baja Cup champion João Ferreira and Frenchman Lionel Baud will persevere with the diesel engine. Guerlain Chicherit may well challenge for overall honours in a third petrol machine but is not personally registered for the W2RC.

The Ford M-Sport Team have developed the Ranger and then the Raptor away from the spotlight of the W2RC for much of 2023 and 2024. But the team has registered for the 2025 W2RC and will be challenging for both the Manufacturers’ and Drivers’ Championships.

Carlos Sainz is a four-time event winner and the defending champion after his memorable success last January with Team Audi Sport. He again teams up with Lucas Cruz and will be joined by former Audi team-mates Mattias Ekström/Emil Bergkvist and Mitch Guthrie/Dennis Zenz in the three cars registered for Manufacturers’ points. Guthrie makes the step up from the Challenger class.

Joan ‘Nani’ Roma has won the Dakar on two wheels and in a car and crews the fourth Raptor with fellow Spaniard Alex Haro. He carried out much of the test and development work over recent months and tackled select events last year, including topping the times at the Hungarian Baja in August.

Other W2RC registered drivers likely to push for the top 10 include Mathieu Serradori (Century CR-7) and Martin Prokop (Ford Raptor).

Overdrive Racing is also running a Toyota for former Dakar motorcycle winners Toby Price and Sam Sunderland. Australian Price will drive with Briton Sunderland navigating on their first real taste of four-wheel competition, but they are not registered for the W2RC.

To make the competition as fair as possible in the flagship Ultimate category, a series of proposals have been approved in the FIA Cross-Country Rally Sporting Regulations to finalise the deployment of the FIA torque meter for the first time in 2025.

This will be the primary system for monitoring and controlling powertrain performance in Ultimate group cars. Sporting penalties of 10 seconds per infringement will be imposed for up to five, 30 seconds for six to 10 or a fixed penalty of 10 minutes per stage for more than 10 infringements.

The Cross-Country Rally Commission carried out an assessment in 2024 and has restructured the points-scoring system. For the Dakar, the points scale of 50, 40, 30, 26, 23, 20, 17, 13, 11, 9, 7, 6, 5 and 4 is in situ and the event will also see four points awarded for classified competitors from 16th place onwards and two points awarded to unclassified competitors.