Carlos Sainz, Spanish motorsport legend, arrives at the 2025 Dakar Rally “as well prepared as possible” and with the aim of “breaking the statistics”, since he has never won a new car, he will debut with Ford, to face what will be his eighteenth edition after the victory last January.
“It is an experience that is repeated, but you always feel a little different sensations depending on the ‘approach’, the car, how the year has gone, depending on many things. There are certain similarities and certain new things, it is another period of your life , things are changing, but The most important thing is that I still have the bug. as the day approaches,” he explained in an interview with Europa Press before a sponsor event.
Every year, and there will be 18 participations with the one in 2025 for the Madrid native, whose career has been linked to the Dakar since 2006, he tries to reach a very demanding race in an optimal way. And this year, in addition, he will do it with a new car, the Ford Raptor.
“I am happy, because I have enjoyed the set-up of the car, everything has gone quite well on track, there have been no moments where we have gone in one direction and then had to reverse. I am happy for the time we have had and I think we arrived as well prepared as possible.“he applauded.
As a four-time winner of the Dakar -2010, 2018, 2020 and 2024-, Sainz can speak from experience and does not agree with the opinions that speak of a loss of essence in the most modern Dakar. “I have experienced the race in Africa, South America and Saudi Arabia, and the DNA of the race, which is probably the best thermometer to measure it is the percentage of abandonments, has not changed, in that sense it has maintained its DNA,” he said.
Furthermore, Sainz understands that Saudi Arabia, where it has been raced since 2020, “is true that it has been very good for the Dakar, because it is an environment where all the circumstances are met for the organizers to put on a Dakar in conditions.”
“Since the first year I arrived at the Dakar, of course, it is a sprint race. This year there are going to be stages in which there are no motorcycles in front, I would say that there are maybe days where it is not so much running, because no one wants to open the race without traces and in that sense perhaps it is a little more tactical than it was,” predicted the 62-year-old from Madrid.
Thus, the veteran driver expects “a first week of the race where many favorites are already going to be discarded”, while in the second week, where that 48-hour stage will have already been held, he hopes to “be fighting to win the race”, against an “already quite reduced” number of rivals.
The Dakar will be in Saudi Arabia until at least 2029, according to the latest renewal with the Asian country, but Sainz cannot confirm that it will continue for another five years. “I know that I will be at the start of the year 2025, that is the only thing I am sure of.”. And at this point in my sporting career I think I have to go, as ‘Cholo’ Simeone says, game by game,” he concluded.
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