Carlos Sainz wants the fourth
Four Dakars with four different manufacturers: Carlos Sainz senior won in 2010 as a Volkswagen driver, in 2018 with Peugeot and in 2020 with Mini. Since 2022, the Spanish driver has been representing Audi, which has undertaken the ambitious project of aiming to win the most famous raid in the world with a hybrid buggy. 2023 was a disappointing edition for the house of the Four Circles which had to deal above all with suspension problems, a component that brought the Audi trident to its knees.
For the 2024 edition in Ingolstadt, a lot of work was done on the suspension and the weight/power ratio was also revisited by the company. FIA which granted Audi a few more kilowatts, and it couldn't be otherwise telemetry in hand. Carlos Sainz spoke about it in an interview with the Spanish newspaper AS: “After two years the FIA has finally agreed with Audi – the words of the Iberian rally-raid legend – analyzing the telemetry revealed that the weight-power ratio was not balanced. They decided to give us more kilowatts and I think we will be able to fight head-to-head with other rivals. Furthermore, the suspension, which was one of the areas in which we wanted to improve after last year, has taken a step forward.”
Winning the Dakar with the Audi hybrid buggy would be the crowning achievement of a remarkable career for Carlos Sainz: “The goal when you are in a brand like Audi, in a powerful and important project like this, is to try to win. It's also true that this is a complicated and difficult objective for the type of car we are trying to make successful. But, as I have always said, this is a very courageous car, technologically very complex, where many things are new and can cause problems.”
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