Dakar | Cars: Sainz and Audi triumph in the 2024 edition

Audi's last dance at the Dakar was the sweetest one. Carlos Sainz and the Ingostadt manufacturer were the protagonists of an amazing race in terms of consistency of results and performances which culminated today, at the end of Stage 12 in Yanbu, which crowned them winners of the Car class of the 46th edition of the most famous rally raid in the world.

For Sainz, two weeks in which his performances were so constant that if we were to represent them on a graph, they would be visible as an almost perfectly straight line. The zero stage victories must be accompanied by the few serious problems with the RS Q e-tron number 204. And here the merits arise not only of the crew, in which Lucas Cruz had the merit of always sailing very well, eliminating the errors that had cost dearly in previous years, but also of the car.

Audi has finally seen the concept of cars that until a few years ago only seemed like a utopia prevail. It is certainly impressive to think that the victory came with a large part of the staff who had worked in recent years on the Dakar project and who are now employed by the Formula 1 project. Yet the car, properly updated, did what Audi had been expecting for some time : go fast and break little.

In short, all the boxes have fallen into place. Sainz's match had even more value by trying to read those of his opponents. Sébastien Loeb was the rider who collected the most stage victories, but he had to settle for third place after the terrible Stage 11, in which he not only lost the chance to fight with Sainz for the victory until the end, but also second place ended up in the hands of a fabulous Guillaume De Mevius, the first private driver in the standings fielded by the Ovedrive Racing team.

Nasser Al-Attiyah, fresh from two victories in a row at the Dakar (2022-2023), had started his new adventure with Prodrive by trying to destabilize the Audi environment with some predictions which, however, went against him. Not only did Audi not withdraw after three days of the race (indeed, the RS Q e-trons had managed to win 2 stages and the Prologue at that point), but it was he who had to raise the white flag.

The Hunter driven by him suffered several suspension failures, but it was the engine of his car that knocked out the Qatari, leading him to even state: “I don't want to race in this car anymore”. A strong statement, which he has made and will cause discussion, especially with the arrival of Dacia starting from 2025 with which he signed a contract a few weeks ago.

Loeb, however, demonstrated the goodness of the Hunter, leading her to fight for the victory until the penultimate stage. The Hunter made by Prodrive is a machine that has grown over time, but it is equally clear that it is too fragile. It will need to be revised to try to avoid the problems seen this year and chase victory already in the first year, 2025, in which it will have the Dacia brand on it.

The Overdrive Racing team celebrates a podium, that of De Mevius, and a fourth place with Guerlain Chicherit which underlines how much it has grown over the last 2 seasons, not to mention the premature retirement of the spearhead, Yazeed Al-Rajhi, just as he was at the top of the general classification. The Saudi prince was forced to stop after overturning his private Hilux in the first part of the 48-hour stage (Stage 6), extinguishing any possible hope of victory.

If M-Sport did not shine in its preparation season, Ford saw the first, but private, Raptor finish in fifth place overall. This is the one managed by Martin Prokop's Orlen Jipocar ​​team. The Czech driver completed the Top 5 and put the first official Toyota GR Hilux T1U behind him, that of rookie Guy David Botterill. The South African placed behind his much more experienced teammate Giniel De Villiers and one of the two spearheads of Toyota Gazoo Racing, Lucas Moraes, in ninth.

Benediktas Vanagas entered the official Hilux, with the Hilux managed by the Toyota Gazoo Racing Baltics team. The Top 10 was completed by Mathieu Serradori with the first official Century CR7-T. The Frenchman must be eating his hands for having thrown away the great opportunity to seize a sensational Top 5 due to a bad Stage 11. Without that he would probably have also fought for fourth place with Chicherit.

Outside the top 10 are the Audi RS Q e-tron of Mattias Ekstroem and Stéphane Peterhansel. Both – unlike Sainz – won stages in this edition of the Dakar, but were also slowed down by various inconveniences that removed them from the ranking. If the Frenchman was overall disappointing from a performance point of view, the same cannot be said of the Swede, who improved enormously and remained in the Top 3 for two thirds of the race.

Both, however, played a fundamental role as Carlos Sainz's squires. Both accompanied him in the second week to ensure that the Madrilenian had spare tires and components if he needed them. Audi's plan was perfect and worked, while Sainz, author of the fourth overall success in the Dakar, celebrates his fourth Touareg victory with 4 different brands: Volkswagen, Peugeot, MINI and now Audi. A legend.

Dakar 2024 – Cars – Final ranking