In the middle of the Moroccan desert, Dacia is embarking on the first meaningful test of its Sandrider T1U with which it will take on the World Rally-Raid Championship and Dakar Rally next year.
As a built-from-scratch project, combining two powerhouses of motorsport in Alpine Racing and Prodrive, it’s so far, so good for the team led by Tiphanie Isnard.
Unveiled in January and shaken down at the end of May, the Dacia Sandrider is set to make its long-awaited competitive debut in October’s W2RC Rallye du Maroc season finale before heading Saudi Arabia for the Dakar Rally.
Therefore, the intensive two-week test in the Moroccan dunes where ambient temperatures reached a peak of 50 degrees centigrade (122 degrees Fahrenheit), has given the team plenty of data to mull over.
“The testing has gone pretty smoothly so far,” explains Isnard. “We have had no major issues with the car, only the dashboard inside the cockpit because the drivers had a little visibility problem and they felt that we needed to improve that, so we made that improvement.
“But this is the only thing we have changed between the testing in Europe and Morocco.
Dacia has spent two weeks testing its Sandrider in Morocco
“In Morocco, our main aim was to focus completely on the reliability of the car. The feedback from our drivers has been positive and they are pretty happy with the handling and the general performance, but it’s not like a track car where we have a reference on times or anything, we have no references to compare ourselves to.
“In time, we will hope to do something like this, to see if we are optimal or not, but in Morocco we are in the middle of nowhere. We are comfortable of our car, but we are not yet 100% sure of our pace so we decided to focus on the reliability for now and we will see in the Rallye du Maroc.”
For many European teams, Morocco has long been a popular destination to go testing and for Dacia, it’s no different. The logistical benefit of providing the same terrain as Saudi Arabia while still easily accessible from its twin base in Paris and the United Kingdom is one of the main reasons the Sandriders spent two weeks in the African dunes.
“It makes perfect sense for us to test in Morocco, for two reasons,” says Isnard. “It is not that far from the UK and our factory in Paris and if we have a big issue or need more spare parts, it is very easy to ship them from either base, so from this side the logistical solution is very beneficial.
“And then, the dunes and the tracks of Morocco give us the best preparation for not only the Rallye du Maroc, but also the Dakar which is very similar and has a lot of dunes (in the Empty Quarter primarily).
“We have almost 500km of these sorts of conditions so we can find a lot of areas in which to test how the car handles and behaves in the dunes. There is no better place than Morocco for this kind of preparation.”
The test was not without its issues though, as can be expected with a brand-new project. Though not entirely representative of what the Sandrider is likely to encounter in Saudi Arabia in January, the higher-than-expected temperatures gave the car’s cooling system a good run for its money.
“We didn’t expect these kinds of conditions because it was between 47 and 50 degrees Celsius in the dunes, so these were extreme temperatures and, with that, we faced our first problems with the car so far with the cooling system.
“But we are for that, this is what testing is all about and in these sorts of conditions it can be expected in a way to have these problems. Apart from that, though, I can say from the first test until now, the car remains robust; it has no big mechanical issues.
Testing has unearthed some issues, but nothing major
“We are starting to work on some evolutions and developments to the car already, between the tests, but the main objective for us in Morocco was to test the limits of the car which we have been able to do. And the cooling system is the only issue we have uncovered so this is good.
“The promising thing is that we will likely not be facing such extreme temperatures in the Dakar itself in Saudi Arabia, because it will be winter there in January. And even in the rest of the W2RC championship we might not face these extremes either; of course, we don’t know the exact calendar for 2026 so it is still important to test in the high temperatures that we have done just to be prepared.”
The silver lining as far as cooling is concerned lies in the fact that the Sandrider has been exposed to far tougher conditions than it has been designed for, which is a positive. The drivers, Sébastien Loeb, Cristina Gutiérrez Herrero and Nasser Al-Attiyah, are also in confident spirits.
“So far, they are feeling comfortable, and they feel like the performance is there in the car with which they can fight, so this is a positive thing.
“Still, there is a lot of work to do, our focus and their focus is what we are doing today. We aren’t really thinking about the overall performance of the car at the moment; in fact, the drivers aren’t even looking at the Rallye du Maroc yet.
Drivers (including Sébastien Loeb) aren't focused on the car's performance just yet
“I asked the drivers for their thoughts on the travel to Morocco but they told me to wait some weeks because they were so focused on the car and the testing so that is where there are at right now, they are concentrated on the present.”
With Prodrive involved in the design and development of the Sandrider alongside Renault’s sporting arm Alpine Racing and Dacia itself, Isnard is confident that her cars will not encounter the same kind of fundamental frailties which impacted Prodrive’s Hunter T1U.
“We have none of those issues which were in the Prodrive car because this is a completely built-from-the-ground up car from the engineers at Dacia and Alpine Racing,” she explains.
“It’s a totally new car, completely different with a new philosophy but of course we will take the experience and lessons learned from the BRX program, but we don’t expect the same problems that they had.
“We are on the development curve all the time and even if we have a similar problem, it will not be linked to the Hunter.”
