Dacia will take part in the Dakar for the first time in 2025 with French drivers Sébastien Loeb and Spanish Cristina Gutiérrez, the Renault group brand announced on Monday. Sébastien Loeb, nine-time WRC rally world champion, will test a Dacia prototype from the end of 2024 on the Rallye du Maroc. The model will be prepared by the ProDrive team, already a partner of Sébastien Loeb in the world rally-raid championship, of which the Dakar was the first round this year. The 49-year-old Alsatian, second in the event in 2023, will be accompanied by his co-driver Fabian Lurquin.
The second car of the Dacia team will be entrusted to Cristina Gutiérrez, 31 years old. The young but experienced Spanish driver knows Loeb well, with whom she won the Extreme E electric 4×4 competition at the end of 2022. The two prototypes, whose model is to be unveiled in early 2024, will run on synthetic fuel, produced by combining hydrogen with carbon dioxide.
Dacia has partnered for this fuel with the oil giant Saudi Aramco, a partner of Renault, and a public company in the country which has hosted the Dakar since 2020. “The Dakar is by nature a full-scale technological laboratory. It is becoming a laboratory for low-carbon mobility,” said Dacia boss Denis Le Vot during a press conference in Saint-Denis, near Paris. “We would not have gone to the Dakar without synthetic fuel”.
The Romanian brand is responsible for continuing to develop thermal engines within the group, while Renault and Alpine are building their electric range. Dacias had so far only competed in the Dakar in a private capacity.
Dacia, which records very good sales with its basic and inexpensive cars, wants to promote its new “all-terrain” identity on the Dakar tracks. The brand will launch in parallel with the race a larger and more elegant SUV than its current Duster, the Bigster, designed to appeal to more affluent customers in Germany or the United Kingdom.
Dacia will give itself the necessary means in the race and “does not want to finish fifth or sixth”, underlined Mr. Le Vot. The Dakar will also be “the priority” of Sébastien Loeb, said the driver, who has also joined the World Rallycross Championship (World RX). With Dacia, “the plan is to make the rally-raid championship in 2025-2026, it is important to progress”, indicated the Alsatian champion. “He’s my mentor, he’s a legend,” said Cristina Gutiérrez alongside her. “And we get along very well, it’s important to develop the car.”
