He’s the man who dominated the World Rally Championship for a decade. He re-wrote records seemingly for fun and won everything in sight. And those 80 rally wins spanned nine titles. Then Sébastien Loeb bumped into Dakar. And the winning stopped.
The Frenchman starts motorsport’s greatest off-road marathon for the ninth time in January, but the journey to right the only part of his otherwise golden record really begins in Morocco on Sunday.
Loeb will be joined by fellow Dacia drivers Nasser Al-Attiyah and Cristina Gutiérrez at the final round of the FIA World Rally-Raid Championship as they put the finishing touches to their twin-turbo three-liter Sandriders. The Rallye du Maroc marks a fitting debut for the Dacia brand and a car developed by Prodrive with input from Renault and Alpine engineers – across five days, the crews will tackle close to 1000 miles competitively.
Loeb is as excited as anybody to see how the previous five test sessions have gone – but he also points out that Saudi Arabia remains very much in sight from Northern Africa.
He said: “After all the hard work in testing we can finally measure ourselves against the competition and see where we are in terms of performance.
Loeb has already completed endurance testing of the Sandrider at the Chateau De Lastours proving ground
“It will be a full-scale test, a live rehearsal you could say, so the objective is, above all to see that everything is in place and working properly. If it isn’t, this is the opportunity to identify the problems and resolve them before Dakar.
But if we can get a good result, that would be even better.”
Of the eight Dakars Loeb’s started, he’s finished six of them and five of those results have been on the podium. He was second in 2022 and 2023, third this year. But none of that matters. He topped the podium 80 times in the WRC and won’t rest until he’s done the same on at least one Dakar.
He doesn’t have to look far to ask for advice on reaching that top step; Al-Attiyah has already been there five times. The Qatari driver starts in Morocco chasing this year’s title, having won two of the four W2RC rounds in a Prodrive Hunter.
Chasing a sixth off-road title, Al-Attiyah said “We are leading the championship and from my side we need to be clever, we need to manage with a good speed and not do anything crazy. The Sandrider is a new car and we must try to work day-by-day.”
For Gutiérrez, Morocco marks a big step in the Spaniard’s career.
Cristina Gutiérrez is stepping up from winning the T3 category last year to the top level
“It will be our first race with the Sandrider and my first race in a new category as I jump from the Challenger to the Ultimate class,” she said. “A lot of new things are coming as it’s a new car, new category and new team, but I already feel very comfortable with the Dacia Sandriders and I hope we can confirm the work done during the tests on Rallye du Maroc.
“I have some pressure, but it’s a positive pressure, the type that makes you give the best of yourself. Of course, it will be a race of preparation for Dakar, but I hope we can achieve a good result and have fun.”
