The German manufacturer made a nice debut at this year’s edition with its hybrid RS Q e-tron which won four of the 12 stages (including three in the second half of the rally).
He could have realistically been fighting against the Toyota and Bahrain Raid Xtreme teams, had it not been for an accident by Stéphane Peterhansel in the first leg and navigation problems for Carlos Sainz and Mattias Ekstrom on the same day that knocked them out of the game for the record.
However, Ekstrom finished with a nice ninth place in the final standings, while Sainz was close to the Top 10 after scoring two stage wins.
The incredible pace of the Audi attracted the attention of Richards, President of Prodrive who took second place with the BRX thanks to Sébastien Loeb.
But the Englishman fears that Audi in 2023 will dominate if the FIA continues with the regulations used in 2022, i.e. with a parity between T1 + cars such as the BRX Hunter built by Prodrive and the electric / hybrid cars registered in the new T1 Ultimate category.
“I think we have to find a good balance now, because it’s clear this year has been a fight between Toyota and us, but everyone knows Audi is much faster than our cars,” Richards told Motorsport.com.
“We have to make sure that everyone has fair competition. And this is the job of the FIA, otherwise, Audi would come here and kill the competition. We have to solve this problem.”
“It is very difficult for the FIA at the moment to be in control when you have new technologies. And so we have to give them some time to analyze the data and to have everything even again.”
“I think we cannot argue at all between us and Toyota. Everything seems okay, I spoke to Seb and Nasser [Al-Attiyah], everyone seems to think we are equal “.
“But clearly Audi’s performance is on another level. They are 200kg overweight, but much faster than our car. So if they had been reliable they would have won by an hour, easily.”
“The FIA will have to face this problem because they are always striving to level performance, so I have faith in them.”
# 211 Bahrain Raid Xtreme Prodrive: Sebastien Loeb, Fabian Lurquin
Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool
Toyota took its first Dakar victory since the event moved to Saudi Arabia in 2020, with Al-Attiyah leading from start to finish in the new Hilux T1 +.
The Qatari had a huge advantage in the second half of the rally that he could afford to take a conservative approach by handling the finish, but Toyota team manager Glyn Hall also agrees on Richards’ speeches regarding Audi.
“The problem we have is that the Audis have done a fantastic job showing how fast they were,” Hall told Motorsport.com. “We have to evaluate well because we know they are 200kg overweight and have won a lot of stages anyway.”
“So there is a lot of work to do, but luckily the Dakar worked and made everything good.”
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