‘Posh’ team for the Dakar. Dacia, a firm that is part of the Renault Group, has announced that they will compete in the Dakar from 2025 with two drivers who will come together again: Sebastien Loeb and Cristina Gutiérrez, last year’s champion team in Extreme-E. The brand of Romanian origin therefore joins the list of manufacturers in which Toyota, Audi or Ford are already included from next year.
already advanced it Luca de Meothe head of Renault, at the presentation of the Alpine Formula 1 team. He then suggested the possibility of Dacia competing in the Dakar, and rumors immediately began to spread about the possibility of Loeb being its driver. There was also speculation about Dani Sordo, but in the end the Spanish presence comes from the hand of Gutiérrez. The preparer that will make the project possible is Prodrive, the team that already ran the Subaru in the World Rally Championship and now the BRX in the Dakar.
Denis Le Vot, CEO of Dacia, explained that “the Dakar is a full-scale technological laboratory. We will compete in 2025 with synthetic fuel from Aramco and in 2026 we will switch to using vehicles powered by e-fuel. In fact, half of the cars we sell today are powered by LPG, which makes our commitment to low emissions clear.”
Loeb has made it clear: “The goal is to fight to win, and we’re going to work hard to achieve it.” Cristina Gutiérrez, for her part, has recognized that “it is very special for me to join Dacia and being the second woman in history to compete with an official team in the Dakar”.