One of the eight categories that make up the Dakar will disappear, at least for the 47th edition, next January, in 2025. For that year, in fact, there will be no Quads, as confirmed by the Director of the Dakar, David Castera on the eve of the W2RC Rally-Raid de Portugal (Transiberian Rally).
In statements collected and published by the Cross Country Rally News group, the Frenchman responded to the rumors according to which Quads would disappear from the world rally-raid championship, but at the same time announced that there will be no Quads in the Dakar: “Everyone tells me about the Quad category. Quads will remain in world championship races, except at the Dakar. At the Dakar we made the decision to discontinue the Quad category next year, in 2025, because we will focus more on motorcycles.”
“We have a lot of requests from competitors and we want to focus more on motorcycles,” he said.
Explaining the decision to “stop” the quad category for 2025, Castera recalled: “Now we have few quads, there is no manufacturer that can keep up with all the competitors and that is why we will stop it for the moment.”
Last January, in the 46th edition of the Dakar, only ten Quads participated and seven finished the race, with the victory of the Argentine Manuel Andujar. Now, the winner and the other riders in the category will have to decide whether to sign up for another class or wait and hope that ASO returns to open the race to Quads in 2026 or in the near future.
The Quads will however be present at this week's Transiberian Rally, the third round of the world championship, where the spotlight will be on Carlos Sainz, who will compete with a Mini from Sven Quandt's X-raid team, and on Sebastien Loeb and Cristina Gutiérrez, who will compete in the Challenger class with Taurus.
After this rally, which will pass through Extremadura and which will take place from yesterday, Tuesday 2 April, to Sunday 7 April, there will be the Desafío Ruta 40 in Argentina (from 1 to 7 June) and the Morocco Rally, which from 5 to 11 October will conclude the W2RC World Championship.
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