- WRC legend Sebastian Loeb is piloting one of the three synthetic-fueled Dacias.
- This year’s Dakar Rally includes 5,145 timed kilometers (3,196 miles) of racing across 12 stages.
- The Dacia team claimed a 1-2 victory at October’s Rallye du Maroc event in Morocco.
Three Dacia Sandriders have been prepped for the 2025 Dakar Rally that kicked off on Friday, and even though this is the brand’s first bid for an outright victory at the world’s most grueling rally, it hopes that its strong recent form could make it one of the contenders. It’s been eighteen months since Dacia announced its Dakar Rally program and between January 3-17, the Sandriders will run from the west to the east of Saudi Arabia.
Dacia has three strong driver pairings that will help it compete with rivals, including Ford and Toyota. Driving the #200 car is Nasser Al-Attiyah and Édouard Boulanger, while in the cockpit of the #212 are Cristina Gutiérrez and Pablo Moreno. Behind the wheel of the #219 Sandrider is WRC legend Sébastien Loeb and Fabian Lurquin. In October, Dacia secured a 1-2 finish at the Rallye du Maroc event in Morocco, which serves as a precursor to the Dakar Rally, putting it in good shape for the event.
Read: Dacia Tests Sandrider In Wales, France, And Morocco Before Dakar 2025
This year’s event kicked off with a Prologue stage and then includes 5,145 timed kilometers (3,196 miles) across 12 days. There is just a single rest day and an overnight stop in Riyadh, the capital city of Saudi Arabia. The most brutal leg of this year’s event is the 48h Chrono Stage that stretches for 971 km across the country’s hostile environment. In total, the rally covers a distance of 7,726 km (4,800 miles).
Since the Sandrider’s success in Morocco, Dacia has been hard at work improving reliability to ensure it can handle the two-week journey across Saudi Arabia. The engine cooling has also been optimized.
“Through testing in Morocco and into the rally we had a certain number of issues with the electronics that controlled the fans for the engines,” technical director Philip Dunabin said. “With the assistance of Alpine Racing, we’ve been able to do quite a deep dive into the electronics of the fans and we’ve put in place several measures together with the fan manufacturer to improve the reliability of those components.”
The Dacia Sandrider rocks a carbon fiber bodywork sitting on top of a lightweight tubular chassis, and is powered by a 355 hp 3.0-liter twin-turbocharged V6 paired to a six-speed sequential gearbox driving all four wheels. The car, which is running on synthetic fuels from Aramco, competes in the Ultimate T1+ class.
