Ask anyone in the World Rally-Raid Championship (W2RC) bivouac what it takes to win the Dakar Rally and you will likely hear one of two answers. If it’s not luck, then it’s experience. For an event that is as close to a blind rally as you can get, the latter is worth its weight in gold.
Yet, ahead of the 47th edition of the Dakar, which kicks off on January 3 in Saudi Arabia, the demographic of crews in the top car class, Ultimate, appears to be changing. Increasingly, those with fewer than 10 starts in the Dakar are filling the entry list, with six of the main T1+ drivers having moved up from the Challenger category in the last two years.
For the 2025 edition, all three podium finishers (Cristina Gutiérrez, Mitch Guthrie and Rokas Baciuška) from last year’s Challenger class will compete in the Ultimate category, while former Challenger racers Seth Quintero (Toyota) and Guillaume de Mévius (Mini) now have a full W2RC campaign under their belts.
With experience and seat time in the Ultimate class now more important than ever, the arrival of the next generation of Dakar competitors may well give cross-country rallying a positive shot in the arm as it looks to build upon its world championship billing.
For 2024 Challenger winner Gutiérrez, it’s proof that the ladder is working.
“For me, it is a dream coming true, because when I started driving and competing, I could never have believed that I would be involved in an official project, but Dacia gave me an incredible program,” Gutiérrez explained to DirtFish.
“It means a lot to me, because I think it is only the second time that a female driver has been involved in a factory project with a manufacturer in the top category.”
Gutiérrez is one of several drivers making the move from Challenger to Ultimate
The differences in machinery between T1+ and Challenger cannot be understated. FIA regulations mandate maximum average speeds between the categories, with Ultimate capped at 170 km/h (106 mph) and Challenger at 135 kph (84 mph) during the special stages.
In making the step up to the T1+ class, Gutiérrez – who became the first woman to win the Dakar since Jutta Kleinschmidt in the car category in 2001 – knows the learning curve will be steep.
“The biggest step for me going to T1+ is obviously the weight of the car [compared to Challenger], the size of the car, which is a lot bigger, and for sure also the speed,” Gutiérrez says.
“Now, we can reach a maximum speed of 170 km/h, compared to 135 km/h in the Challenger, so the speed differential is massive, so you need to understand how to manage this change in speed, especially in the navigation for Pablo [Moreno Huete].
“We have learned how to adapt our communication with the navigation, because if we were like we were last year, for sure we would be late with the notes and the dangers. And the way that I drive, we had to find the limit of the car during testing because the speeds of the T1+ cars are incredible.
“You can pass through the holes and over the jumps very easily, and if you did the same thing in a Challenger, probably you would destroy the car. So, we need to see the limit and find out what happens to the car if we pass through these difficult areas, and that’s what we have done in the testing by doing lots of kilometers.”
Like Gutiérrez, three-time W2RC champion Rokas Baciuška will be racing the Dakar in a T1+ for the first time too.
The Lithuanian driver, who won back-to-back SSV titles before claiming the Challenger crown in October’s Rallye du Maroc, made his Ultimate bow on the Baja Aragón in the summer at the wheel of an Overdrive Racing-prepared Toyota Hilux with which he will again drive in Saudi Arabia alongside navigator Oriol Mena.
Baciuška has the keys to a Toyota Hilux for his graduation to the top class
For Baciuška, the challenge of stepping up to T1+ is not just a case of getting used to different machinery, but also getting into the right physical shape in order to deal with the G-forces created by the Ultimate cars.
“The speed is the main thing that you need to adapt to, of course, it is a lot faster than in the SSV and you really need to concentrate a lot on your driving and the notes from the navigation,” says Baciuška.
“But also, for the back, it affects you more than in the SSV because you have two-and-a-half tons of weight in the car, which is totally different too. They are big, heavy cars to drive, and it is quite difficult.
“I did a couple of rallies in the T1+ already, in Ha’il and the Baja Aragón and, although I was not pushing like hell, I gained a lot of experience which was the most important thing. Drivers like [Yazeed] Al Rajhi, Nasser [Al-Attiyah] and [Sébastien] Loeb have done a lot of kilometers and it’s important to get more mileage.
Gutiérrez and Baciuška will both be going up against their former Challenger rival, Mitch Guthrie Jr, who will contest his first event in a T1+ with M-Sport Ford Performance. Despite lacking the race experience of his fellow graduates, Guthrie has amassed over 3000km (1864 miles) of testing in the Raptor T1+ over the summer.
Guthrie has traded his Taurus T3 Max for a Ford Raptor T1+
“In basic terms, there are some similarities between the two cars,” Guthrie explains. “For example, the Challenger also has a sequential gearbox, although the car itself is way smaller, has less power and is a lot lighter, but overall, it does the same thing as the T1+.
“Driving the Challenger definitely helped me find my style, get me used to rally raid before the step up to T1+, which is a much bigger step up. It’s probably helped me get up to speed quicker in the T1+ than if I hadn’t been in Challenger these past years.”
In contrast to all of the above, one driver made the jump to T1+ machinery after just one Dakar attempt – her first ever – in 2023.
Aliyyah Koloc made her Dakar debut at the age of just 18 in a T3 Lightweight run by the family team Buggyra ZM Racing after a handful of events in the FIA Middle East World Cup for Bajas in 2022. A podium in the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge among the registered W2RC entries earmarked her for future success, but the graduation was expedited when she caught the attention of privateer boss of Red-Lined Motorsport, Terence Marsh.
“It was during the Dakar in 2023 that I was watching some of the times in the stages and I saw this 18-year-old girl doing the same kind of times as Gutiérrez and everyone else on three or four of the stages,” Marsh tells DirtFish.
“So, I was immediately intrigued: ‘who is this girl, is it just daddy’s money?’, but no it was really impressive. And I went down the bivouac and introduced myself to her father and said that we could get her in one of our cars to test her out.
Koloc impressed enough on her Dakar debut to earn a top-class drive
“It was clear that she had some potential, we put her in a T1, and she did some national events with us in South Africa, and we saw just how talented she is, and we decided to get out of side-by-sides and put her on the Dakar in a T1.”
For Koloc, who still combined rally-raid with circuit racing in Europe during the season, the step up surprised even her.
“I think, compared to a lot of other drivers, I made the jump relatively quickly!” says Koloc.
“I had only done, what, a couple of years in buggies, so it was a big change, but moving to a standard T1 first before going to T1+ with Red-Lined was definitely a big help.
“The car is very big, so you have to get used to the surroundings which takes some time and compared to the buggies, you don’t see as well in the T1+ cars either so that has been a bit of a struggle for me, especially in the dunes.
“But after driving these big cars and getting used to the weight and being able to play with it and control a bit more, I don’t think I could go back [to Challenger].”
Although experienced crews such as Carlos Sainz, Nasser Al-Attiyah and Sébastien Loeb remain the overwhelming favorites for the 2025 edition of the Dakar Rally, eyes will certainly be on the T1+ newcomers in Saudi Arabia.
