► The 2025 Dakar is nearly here
► Dacia three-year plan I detail
► It’s teamed up with Prodrive
The number one rule in Dakar is: don’t have a problem. A problem creates more work that means other things might be missed. So many things can cause problems: the length of the event, the heat, the dust, the rocks…’ So says Philip Dunabin, technical director of the Dacia Sandriders project: the Romanian budget car maker’s ambitious plan to contest the Dakar rally – the world’s toughest – for three years.
He’s the yin of the operation, drawing on his years of Dakar experience to foresee every possible problem, and make sure there’s a solution at hand – a solution that can be implemented by a hot, tired driver and co-driver in a sandstorm, several days into a gruelling two-week race through Saudi Arabia.
‘It’s the easiest thing in the world to get it wrong,’ he stresses. This is him in buoyant mood, still buzzing after the Prodrive-run team’s success in its first competitive outing, the Rallye du Maroc. ‘Yes, we did well in Morocco: one-two, and all three cars finished. But there’s no complacency. Vigilance has to be at the highest level.’
The yang to Dunabin’s yin is another Dakar veteran, team principal Tiphanie Isnard. The official line is that this is a learning experience that will bring Dacia various technical benefits, and help boost the ‘robust and outdoor’ part of its brand DNA. But, asked if Dacia can do what nobody else has done, and win the Dakar at their first attempt, she doesn’t hesitate: ‘For sure, we want to make that change. It’s not our expectation, but our hope.’
The best-laid plans can easily end upside-down at the foot of a dune on day two, one wheel hanging off and the engine on fire. But Dacia has done all it can to load the dice in its favour: team up with the hugely experienced Prodrive as technical provider; tap into wider Renault Group knowledge; and sign a stellar driver line-up, out- shining even the personnel Audi hired for its ultimately successful three-Dakar programme.
Nasser Al-Attiyah, who won the 2024 World Rally Raid Championship with his Moroccan victory, has won five Dakars. Sébastien Loeb, nine-times World Rally champion, has been runner-up on the Dakar three times. And Cristina Gutiérrez Herrero – 20 years Al-Attiyah’s junior – won the T3 category at Dakar last time out.
And they obsess over the details. The Nissan V6 engine, six-speed sequential manual gearbox, the tubular steel chassis and the rest of the hardware is well proven. The cabin – with a dashboard by Dacia’s in-house designers – has been conceived to be safer and less unbearably hot. The bolts all have the same head size, to minimise the number of tools on the car for the running repairs that can be carried out by the driver and co-driver.
Dunabin says: ‘It’s not about power output – it’s about engine management that lets you make the most of it, and reliability. An engine change incurs a 50-hour penal- ty, and would take 10-12 hours. So you really don’t want to change an engine.’
As we watch the cars being checked and rebuilt in the gap between the Moroccan debut and the big challenge coming up in Saudi, Dunabin tells us: ‘Post Morocco, the problems to be addressed were mostly reliability rather than performance. For instance, a cooling fan dropping off.’ Cooling – for the powertrain and for the cabin – is a major obsession.
‘There’s a wind-tunnel session coming up in a couple of weeks – not to change the aerodynamics from a performance perspective, but to improve the cooling.’
The three cars are backed up by 62 staff and 25 support vehicles, laden with generators, inflatable service bays, washing machines and everything else you need for a fortnight living in the desert.
But Dacia isn’t the only manufacturer-supported operation with high expectations for January’s race. Mini is back. Ford has a new V8-engined Ranger Raptor. And many possible winners are in the consistently successful Toyota Hilux – including, intriguingly, a pair of two-time motorcycle category winners, Toby Price and Sam Sunderland.