How Alpine is helping Loeb’s bid for Dakar history with an unlikely challenger

The Dakar Rally returns to provide one of motorsport’s toughest tests for human and machine in January, with Saudi Arabia again hosting the challenge. It may not be the event it once was when run through Africa to the Senegalese capital (the event’s name gives it away) but the test remains one that requires ultimate performance and robustness to overcome.

Relevance remains for manufacturers looking to prove their mettle in the rally raid theatre, with Toyota, Ford and Mini all competing in the World Rally-Raid Championship’s (WR2C) Cars class – as well as privateer Volkswagens, which are offshoots of the old works team.

REPORT: Dacia cools Dakar expectations after debut 1-2 at Rallye du Maroc

For the 2025 edition, there’s a surprise name aiming for glory: Dacia. The small Romanian manufacturer is taking on the giants and aiming to make history when the Dakar Rally starts on 3 January. Autosport was invited to visit the factory of technical partner Prodrive, ahead of its quest for glory.

Why Dacia is tackling Dakar

Dacia is very cynical in its business model. It offers affordable cars to its consumers, including only what it needs within its model range to keep costs down, rather than adding all the gadgets and gizmos we have come to expect in our road cars. Yet with a mission statement that includes focusing on its sustainability and remaining ‘Eco-Smart’, the Dakar project actually presents a number of important testbeds for the brand.

“Our ambition within the Dakar project is obviously to win, first and foremost,” says Dacia UK and Ireland brand director Luke Broad, who is aware this is no easy task for a brand at the first time of asking.

“But we also see it as an effective outdoor technical laboratory. The idea is to take our learnings within Dakar with a view to eventually seeing some of the innovations that we put in this car in our road cars.

“It’s also a place for us to experiment with sustainable fuels because, as a brand, we’re not about going into the desert and polluting it. We are going to do it in a very sustainable way, and that fits under our Eco-Smart brand.”

Those sustainable fuels will come through a partnership with Saudi-based company Aramco, which has been working on a similar project with Formula 1 as the world championship ushers in a sustainable future in 2026.

Technical director Philip Dunabin says that while certain instances of technology transfer between the Dakar project and Dacia’s road-car business “are not really very visible”, they are still significant.

If a partnership with Prodrive wasn’t enough to make you believe Dacia was taking this seriously, then the crews that will get to grips with the three-car entry should

“Dacia has been working on pigments and resin, in this case in the carbon fibre,” he explains. “These are pigments that are intended to reduce infrared absorption, intended to keep temperatures lower in the cars. Those have got applications for them in terms of pigment arrangement in road cars.

“They have also brought very matte, IR-reflecting (infra-red) paint that they will be using in the future in road cars. We use it here in things like the dashtop for low reflection, low glare from the windscreen.

“There are elements that are not in the car yet in terms of to do with materials for the seats and so on, which have come directly from Dacia road cars and of course, there is the work they are helping us do with sustainable fuels with the partnership with Aramco.”

Dunabin and team principal Tiphanie Isnard are leading the Prodrive effort – officially called the Dacia Sandriders. The British operation that conquered the World Rally Championship with Subaru provides the motorsport expertise needed to help the programme shortcut its learning curve.

“When we are doing things in Dacia, we need to do well with the best specialist around us, so (that’s) why we are here with Prodrive, it is one of the most successful companies in motorsports,” says Isnard. “For us, it’s the best partner as the technical provider for all the development.”

A strong three-pronged line-up

If a partnership with Prodrive, which has tackled Dakar on the past four years with the BRX Hunter and managed two runner-up finishes, wasn’t enough to make you believe Dacia was taking this seriously then the crews that will get to grips with the three-car entry should.

Five-time Dakar winner Nasser Al-Attiyah is joined by navigator Edouard Boulanger in car #200 as he attempts to close on Stephane Peterhansel’s record of eight wins in the Cars category.

One of rallying’s most famous names, Sebastien Loeb, returns for another crack at getting his first Dakar win after finishing third in 2024. The three-time runner-up, twice with Prodrive, will be partnered in his #219 car by Fabian Lurquin, while the youth of the team comes in the form of Cristina Gutierrez, who raced with Loeb in the Prodrive-run X44 Extreme E team. The Spaniard, who won the Challenger (T3) class on the 2024 Dakar, is joined by Pablo Moreno in the #212 entry.

The drivers have long been assisting with the development of the entire project, with Isnard telling Autosport: “They were really involved from the beginning, they jumped in the car as quick as they could. They want to be a part of the first day of the car.

“They quickly react and give feedback, which is positive, but also on what we need to improve and they call me, even on bank holidays in France – one was in the pool! But they all the time have questions and ask how the team is, what are the changes, what will be the car for Dakar.”

Having explained how the drivers used virtual headsets to get a feel for the inside of the cockpit when at the headquarters early on, Isnard adds: “From the beginning, the project was built with the crew in the Dacia design office. (We) said ‘what do you want’ and then built the design of the car around them. It is their office, so it’s really important for the driver and navigator as a part of the performance.”

Integration between driver and team extends far past just the technical development at the start of the project. Teams essentially live together in bivouacs during the Dakar rally, so egos have to be left at the door. On Loeb in particular, chief mechanic Alistair ‘Stretch’ Gibson could only hail the Frenchman.

“He’s great,” says Gibson, unrelated to namesake Alastair who worked for the Prodrive-run BAR Formula 1 team in the noughties. “He is the person you see on the telly. He is shy, he is quiet, but he is actually really easy and simple to work with. He’s not demanding. I was quite surprised; I expected a troublesome time, but it was completely the opposite. He just wants to get in the car and drive. Once the number is on the door, he wants to go and win.

“It’s a different breed of driver that wants to do Dakar and all these different demands of ‘I want these drinks or those grapes’ is out the window because you can’t have it – it’s not there. We sit and we eat together, there’s not a special catering out the back for the drivers. We sit and eat together and all the teams from the whole bivouac are all together.”

While Loeb and Al-Attiyah will take the headlines from the line-up, the team is by no means expecting Gutierrez to simply make up the numbers.

“We want a rising young driver to have with two experienced drivers. When we saw the (test) results, it was quite simple, Christina was the best one” Tiphanie Isnard

“I wouldn’t discount Cristina,” insists Gibson. “We saw through the testing phase that she is pretty determined and pretty good at what she does.

“She certainly earned the respect of the team around her with her performance in the test. It’s not easy in Morocco and she was pretty tough, really good pace and good feedback. We were really impressed with her.”

In that test-run during the Rallye du Maroc, where the squad finished 1-2 on debut with Al-Attiyah and Loeb, Gutierrez was helping the team run shelf-life experiments, using components that had been used in previous tests to help discover durability levels of different parts – a vital mission as part of Dakar preparation.

While using a female driver as well as a female team principal is a strong commercial move, Isnard is adamant this had no bearing on Gutierrez getting the nod.

“The choice was quite simple,” she says. “We want a rising young driver to have with two experienced drivers. When we saw the (test) results, it was quite simple, Cristina was the best one. She is a woman, that’s great, but that was not the first choice.”

Alpine’s assistance to realise Dacia dreams

While the Prodrive link-up and crew line-up makes the operation at least competitive, the Dacia Sandriders still have to take on the might of manufacturers that have been Dakar incumbents in recent times, not least in Toyota. But, being part of the Renault Group, Dacia has been able to take on expertise both in personnel and physical materials which will help accelerate its effort. Dunabin and Isnard are both Alpine Racing team members who have been designated to the project.

“Within the Renault Group, the motorsport resource is Alpine Racing,” Dunabin explains, “that looks after Formula 1, WEC, Formula E – where it looks after the programme for Nissan – rally with Renault Clios, Rally3, one-make championships and circuit racing. All of that expertise in motorsport is held within Alpine.

“So it is natural that Dacia came to Alpine to say ‘we want to use Alpine as the motorsport expertise for handling our rally raid programme’. That’s where Tiphanie and myself come from. We work exclusively for Dacia, but we actually work for Alpine.

“There’s an awful lot of expertise. Recently, we have done things like materials analysis within Alpine for things on this car, electronics analysis (too). There is a whole technical resource within Alpine that is a disposition of this programme.

“When you make a road car, you don’t pretend to do everything yourself anyway. Dacia is not going to make a steering rack, it is going to know who it wants to go to to install that. It is the same sort of thing in this arrangement. Prodrive have expertise in motorsport, they have an understanding of rally raid. You then have supervision from Alpine representing Dacia and Dacia utilises all of this resource to maximise the benefit for their programme.”

Speaking to Autosport’s Italian sister site during a Dacia Sandriders event in Italy, Loeb put his enthusiasm for the project down to the involvement of both Renault and Prodrive.

“In the past months I had to make a choice,” he related. “I had to choose a major project because my intention was still to race in the Dakar and the Dacia project seemed to me the best.

“This is all because of the ambitions of the brand, of the manufacturer, which involved me in the project. Although it is its first sports project in the discipline, it has a huge, visible, tangible motivation.

“Then I know several people involved; Bruno Famin, the boss of Renault Group as far as motorsport is concerned. I also know Prodrive well, with whom I raced in the Dakar and in the World Rally Raid during the last two seasons. I thought starting a project from scratch with these people involved was a good thing; they could use our experience made in the past to make a very competitive car.”

Can Dacia conquer the challenge of Dakar?

However competitive the car is on paper, or how strong the line-up and pedigree of the entire squad may be compared to rival outfits, the real test is the conditions faced in Saudi Arabia. Almost 8,000km will be covered across 12 stages which will take in gruelling terrain in the desert heat – and cold – of the Middle Eastern Kingdom, including the daunting 48-hour, 1057km endurance stage. With bivouacs set up each night, any repairs to cars must be done while exposed to the elements.

“The sandstorm is the worst environment to work in,” Gibson explains. “You can cope with the rain and the cold and the heat, but the sandstorm is definitely the worst, especially if it is a gearbox or a major component that needs working on. It does happen, and you just have to get on with it.”

“The easiest thing to do with Dakar is to screw up. It is incredibly difficult to do a Dakar when you don’t have problems” Philip Dunabin

“We try to avoid opening a gearbox or engine in that sort of situation, or any air intakes. But sometimes, you just have to get on with it. With the tents, we can try and pull the sides down.

“Thankfully, it doesn’t happen that often. Only twice in the last four years have we had a really bad sandstorm in the bivouac, so they do come. It does present challenges in many ways, from the tents themselves, or the trucks or the generators – it is just a feature of the landscape.”

With the 1-2 finish in Morocco proving the car’s speed, focus since then has been on ensuring the reliability is up to scratch to avoid a repeat of cooling issues.

“A lot of the stuff in terms of the cooling in Morocco was to do with the reliability side than anything else,” says Dunabin. “We had incidents where fans would drop out, that sort of thing. If you lose one of the fans out of the system, then the car tends to get a bit too hot. So most of what we have been concentrating on is on the reliability side.

“Obviously we finished first and second, we won three out of five stages. We were never very far away from the front of the field and there were one or two subjects where we sailed a bit too close to the wind. Those subjects are things we have been working on to get right for Dakar.”

While the result in Morocco puts Dacia Sandriders in a strong position to ink its name into the Dakar history books, there is no complacency being allowed to creep in.

“The easiest thing to do with Dakar is to screw up,” cautions Dunabin. “It is incredibly difficult to do a Dakar when you don’t have problems, you don’t make any mistakes – no driving mistakes, no navigational mistakes, no technical error, no finger trouble. It’s an event that is two weeks on, the days are long and everybody gets very tired. The vigilance that is needed to deliver a Dakar is really at the top level.

“The fact we won in Morocco is great, fantastic for Dacia – they have manufacturing plants in Morocco, they are by far and away number one in terms of the sales in Morocco and it couldn’t be any better for the Dacia people in Morocco to have the car arrive and win the rally. But no, I don’t think there’s any complacency. We can absolutely not assume we can go to Dakar and just trundle around. It will be hard.”