When two-time Dakar Rally winner Toby Price got the news that KTM would not be renewing his contract for the 2025 event, it seemed only a matter of time before the long-mooted switch from two wheels to four finally materialized.
While Price’s move to the car class was hardly a surprise – Price has contested both the Baja 100 and Finke Desert Rally in a trophy truck previously – few expected it to come as soon as it has.
And even fewer tipped fellow ex-biker and KTM team-mate, Sam Sunderland, to be sat alongside in the Overdrive Racing prepared Toyota Hilux either.
“Teaming up with Overdrive Racing in a T1+ car is a dream come true, and it’s an opportunity for which I’m so grateful and intend to maximize,” Price said following the announcement.
“It’s taken a lot of work since March to get everything in place, and it’s surreal that it’s finally coming to fruition.”
Between Price and Sunderland, there will be four Dakar wins in the same car. Save for Nasser Al-Attiyah and Carlos Sainz, that’s the most prolific duo in the car category in Saudi Arabia this year.
Over the years, many bikers have made the move sideways to the car class once their two-wheeled days reach their conclusion.
Stéphane Peterhansel achieved more success on four wheels [eight victories, with Mitsubishi, Mini and Peugeot] than he did on two [six wins between 1991 and 1998], while M-Sport Ford’s Nani Roma replicated his 2004 bike triumph with victory in the car class a decade later.
“For me, bikes helped me a lot when I made the change to cars, in terms of driving and reading the desert,” Roma says.
“So, Toby already has some experience in cars before so I am sure that he will settle in well but the biggest difference for him will be adapting to the cars we drive on in the Dakar in the cars, compared to the Pro trucks that he has driven in the US before.
“The weight of our cars is different; the suspension travel is different, and this is one of the sure points where he needs to be really careful.
“And maybe the most difficult thing to get used to is the visibility; inside the car the view is quite limited, versus on a bike you have almost a 360-degree view.
“In the car, the difference is big; overtaking for example on a bike is easy, you can overtake almost everywhere. In the car, you cannot just pass anywhere, over the rocks, sometimes you have to be patient.”
Roma certainly knows what he is talking about. Alongside Peterhansel and the late Hubert Auriol [who won the car class in 1992], he is one of only three competitors to have won on two and four wheels.
Nani Roma has won Dakars on both two and four wheels
When he made the announcement that he would be retiring from the bike category and switching to cars, Sunderland quipped that ‘with age comes a cage!’ and he’s not entirely wrong either.
The double winner – who in recent years plied his trade with KTM sister brand Gas Gas – is following in the footsteps of many fellow bikers himself by getting into the passenger seat in the car category.
Edouard Boulanger made the move to four wheels initially with Peterhansel but is now the trusted Lieutenant to Nasser Al-Attiyah at Dacia, while Armand Monleon [navigator for Toyota’s Lucas Moraes] and Brett Cummings [with Henk Lategan] are also reflective of the class-jumping trend on the navigation side.
It stands to reason that those Dakar competitors who have spent years racing for themselves unsurprisingly make good navigators.
Indeed, a problem shared is a problem halved as they say.
“I’m delighted to have a seat belt and a roll bar around me,” said Sunderland when his deal with Price was done.
“I remember the days at the Dakar when we’d sit in the camper van after a long, hard day on the bike, discussing how nice it would be to be in a car with a seatbelt and some air conditioning. It still seemed unrealistic.
“I’m pretty sure I will get a good result; clearly, that’s vague, of course, but I’m confident in Toby’s ability to drive well and mine to navigate well. I hope it all goes according to plan.”
Key to things going to plan is being able to adapt seamlessly to the unique quirks of four-wheel machinery, which is not always a given for bikers who make the switch.
Xavier de Soultrait spent nine years in the bike category, recording a best finish of seventh place in 2019 before switching to the SSV class which he won last year in a Sébastien Loeb Racing Polaris.
De Soultrait needed just one Dakar to get his eye in before taking victory, exemplifying the ‘coup de volant’ [the natural feeling] he feels is required to make the bike to car jump a success.
“There are a lot of bikers who make the switch to the cars that find that they are just not that fast, unfortunately for them,” De Soultrait explains.
“You need to have that feeling with a car that is quite difficult to explain to a biker. You can go karting with them and they are doing all the right things, but they don’t have that extra little bit.
“We [with navigator Martin Bonnet] drove alongside some WRC drivers, in roughly the same machinery and we saw that we had this feeling for the car and so did our bosses. And this was a super feeling for us, to be able to drive at more or less the same kind of pace as a WRC driver.”
Like Sunderland, de Soultrait has battled frequent injuries in the past few years, and it was this aspect of the bike class that expedited his move to four wheels.
There are a number of differences between competing on a bike and in a car
“When I was fighting for the win, I had a crash and I was injured quite badly,” recalls de Soultrait. “I broke my back in 2021 when I was leading the race and fighting with Toby Price and [Kevin] Benavides.
“I didn’t damage my spine, but it was very, very close. I was quite close to being paralyzed. At the time, my wife was pregnant, and a plane took me back to France. And, just in front of me, another biker who had a crash also, died on the flight.
“So, this very bad crash continued to be a presence in my head and after this I decided to stop riding bikes after one more Dakar.
“I had a lot of battles with Sam in the bike class, when we were racing at 200kph with just a helmet and gloves! Now, in the car class, we are restricted to 150kph with a roll cage and everything, we’re not as afraid anymore. If we have a high-speed accident and roll in the stage, we’re buckled in with a helmet, nothing much can happen to you; if you have a fall on a bike, you’re finished.”
It’s often said that when you lose the confidence on a bike, the safest option is to call it quits, and this is precisely what prompted de Soultrait’s call.
The latter part of Sunderland’s career has been dogged with injury and illness, most notably in 2023 [a year after his second Dakar win] when he crashed out on the opening day, just 52km into the rally, breaking his shoulder and suffering concussion.
The move to the navigator’s seat will, however, offer a new challenge for the British rider. A challenge which, according to Roma, will not come easy.
Sam Sunderland and Toby Price are ready for a new kind of challenge in 2025
“It will for sure be hard for him [to adapt initially], because he has been so used to making the decisions both in navigation and driving,” says Roma.
“The navigation in a car compared to the bike is really, really different also. On the bike, you take your own decisions; even if it is the wrong decision, at least it is your own.
“And now, it’s Sam who has to explain the roadbook to someone else who then has to drive. This is the challenge for Sam. And you need to be quick in navigation too; if you are slow to give the right directions then you are late and you don’t see the tracks, the waypoints and you start to make mistakes.
“For example, my co-driver [Alex Haro Bravo] came from the WRC so he was used to studying the roads, writing the notes and delivering them fast. For Sam, he is used to reading the roadbook and making the decision, but he drives.
“Now, he has to read the book and then try to explain properly to Toby the way to go.”
Despite the uphill challenge ahead of them, Roma believes the combination of Price and Sunderland – and their collective quartet of Dakar victories – can be competitive in Saudi Arabia.
“Honestly, I think they can be fast; I like both of them a lot,” says Roma. “Toby is a great guy, really typically laid-back Australian mentality and it’s great that he found this car to do the Dakar.
“You have two winners, four Dakars in the same car so I think they will be successful.”
