Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

Charan Moore will not race the Dakar Rally in 2025, at least not on a bike. On Tuesday, he wrote he does not intend to do a fourth Dakar on two wheels, ending a three-year stint in which he won the Malle Moto subcategory in 2023. He has not specified his plans for 2025.

“It’s been a year,” began a post from Moore. “2025, I won’t be going back to Dakar on a bike. Grateful for this chapter of my life and everyone that has been involved in the greatest adventure on two wheels.

“Time to start writing the next chapter.”

Moore made his Dakar début in 2022 in Original by Motul; also known as Malle Moto, it is an amateur for riders competing without assistance from teams. After narrowly missed the class podium that year, he broke through in 2023 with nine stage wins en route to the Malle Moto overall win.

Malle Moto winners are forbidden from returning to the class in later starts and must move up to the broader Rally2 category, so Moore joined HT Rally Raid Husqvarna Racing for the 2024 edition. Although Rally2 is a much bigger field and the race was what he called “the hardest one yet”, he consistently ran within the late top twenty en route to a ninth overall with a best finish of eighth in Stage #2.

After about eleven months, Guillaume de Mévius‘ time with Overdrive Racing has come to an abrupt end. On Tuesday, AUTOhebdo reported—with confirmation from Overdrive head Jean-Marc Fortin—that the Belgian left the team and will instead race a Mini John Cooper Works Rally Plus for X-raid Team starting with the Rallye du Maroc.

The news comes as a massive shock even to Fortin, who admitted he was “as surprised as I am disappointed.”

After racing primarily in the Challenger category, de Mévius graduated to the top level with Overdrive last October when he made his début at the Rallye du Maroc. Piloting a Toyota Hilux Overdrive, he finished twelfth in class.

He then committed to the 2024 World Rally-Raid Championship with the team, and impressed from the start when he finished runner-up at the Dakar Rally. The next two races were set back by a compressed vertebra from a hard landing at the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge followed by mechanical issues at the BP Ultimate Rally-Raid.

De Mévius did not enter the Desafío Ruta 40, the latest and penultimate W2RC round, but he returned to action at the FIA World Baja Cup’s Baja España Aragón and won. Aragón also marked the first race for his new co-driver Mathieu Baumel, a five-time Dakar winner and twice World Rally-Raid Champion with Toyota.

After nine Dakar Rallies in a car, Vaidotas Žala will try his hand at the big boys in 2025 when he makes his debut in a truck. He will race an IVECO PowerStar fielded by Team de Rooy with sponsorship from Skuba.

“New to the team is Vaidotas Žala, he is a well known Lithuanian rally and rally raid pilot who will try his luck in the truck category,” reads a statement from Team de Rooy. “During testing, Vaidotas has proven to be a great pilot and instantly got the right feeling for the rally truck. He impressed us with his driving skills and techniques.”

Žala most recently raced the Dakar in a Mini John Cooper Works Rally Plus, with which he placed fifty-second in the Ultimate class. He was the category’s last finisher after an up-and-down race in which he finished as high as second but was set back by a myriad of mechanical problems like a pothole destroying the hydraulic jack system, an engine failure, and the alternator cable detaching and causing the battery to lose power.

The Mini T1+ was the fifth different vehicle that he raced Dakar with. He made his début in 2016 in a SEAT Leon before switching to a Toyota Hilux Overdrive in 2018, a standard Mini JCW Rally in 2020, and the Prodrive Hunter in 2023. His best finish was an eleventh at the 2022 race.

Since Dakar, he has mainly focused on the Lithuanian Rally Championship in a Škoda Fabia RS Rally2. Nevertheless, he continued to dabble in various cross-country rallies such as the BP Ultimate Rally-Raid in Portugal in April, where he retired after a crew member inadvertently used contaminated fuel to refuel his Mini.

In January, Carlos Santaolalla and Jan Rosa Viñas won the Dakar Classic in their Toyota Land Cruiser HDJ80. Eight months later, they continued their winning ways in the deserts of Morocco when they crushed the RallyClassics Africa.

The duo recorded the lowest average score to beat fellow Land Cruiser driver and Dakar Classic competitor Asier Duarte by nearly 200 points. Santaolalla won the first stage before Carles Bracons in his own Land Cruiser topped Stage #2, then the former claimed the last leg to finish the job.

Defending winner Antonio Rius broke up the Land Cruiser party with a Stage #3 victory in his SEAT Toledo Marathon, though he finished seventeenth. Nevertheless, the Spanish marque joined Santaolalla and Duarte on the overall podium courtesy of Jose Enrique Ruiz Perez.

The SEAT entries were prepared by SEAT Históricos, the manufacturer’s historic car collection and restoration programme. Isidre López Badenas, the head of the division, finished twenty-first in a SEAT Ateca.

Rafael Lesmes and his pink Mercedes-Benz 1844 AK, nicknamed Elefante Rosa (“Pink Elephant”), overcome an early navigation error to place fourth. He was the highest finishing truck, just as he was at Dakar.

The 2024 FIA European Baja Cup has been a battle of the Portuguese as João Ferreira is pursued by Fernando Manuel Barreiros and João Dias. The penultimate round of the season took the trio back home to Portugal, where a stout Ferreira stout won outright to maintain his position atop the standings while also passing Dias for the Portuguese Cross-Country Championship lead.

Ferreira entered the weekend leading Barreiros by thirteen points and Dias by thirty-four in the overall. The race ran smoothly for Ferreira’s Mini JCW Rally Plus as he won the first two stages while Dias was left to battle with Tiago Reis for third. Things seemed to take a turn for the leader when his power steering pump malfunctioned just three kilometres into the third and final stage, but he managed to nurse the Mini to the finish in sixth overall and second in Ultimate.

Helder Oliveira, another Mini driver, won the last stage to secure the runner-up in his co-driver Fausto Mota‘s maiden Ultimate race. Dias managed to beat Reis for the last spot on the outright podium and the Challenger class win by fifty-two seconds.

With Francisco Barreto’s retirement due to a Stage #1 rollover, Ferreira has all but locked up the Ultimate title. In the overall, the 2022 champion maintains his thirteen-point advantage on Barreiros while Dias trails him by twenty-sixth.

Ferreira also leapfrogs Dias in the Portuguese Championship (CPTT) after going into Sharish Gin behind by a single point. However, both drivers will likely have to make sacrifices of some kind as the European Baja Cup and CPTT season finales, respectively the Baja Troia Türkiye and Baja Escuderia Castelo Branco, are on the same weekend.

Mitch Guthrie is the latest driver to graduate from Challenger to Ultimate as he joins Ford Performance for the 2025 Dakar Rally, where he will drive the new Ford Raptor T1+ from M-Sport.

Guthrie narrowly missed out on the 2023 World Rally-Raid Championship in what is then the T3 class, winning twice at the Sonora Rally and Desafío Ruta 40 before losing to Seth Quintero in the final race by just five points. The Americans and former team-mates will renew their friendly feud in 2025 as Quintero currently races for rival Toyota Gazoo Racing in the Ultimate class.

After the 2023 season, Guthrie had his first taste of the premier category when he drove a Ford Ranger T1+—the predecessor to the Raptor—as part of the W2RC Next Gen Tryouts.

“Since I was younger, I’ve always been interested in Ford. Originally, when I was going to school and before I could even drive, I saw the Raptor come out and it was my dream car,” Guthrie recalled. “Eventually, thankfully, I was able to buy one in 2019. I still have it and still really enjoy it. Ford is such a well-known brand and synonymous with the United States, so that was of course a dream of mine to be part of the brand. To now be in the T1+ category, driving for Ford, it’s all coming full circle and is really a dream come true for me. I’m really excited to be part of the Ford family.”

Despite running the full 2023 W2RC, Guthrie has only entered the Dakar Rally in 2024. He had been leading the Challenger class during the second half of the rally before a disconnected turbocharger hose and gearbox failure on the final stage dropped him to second.

Martin Macík Jr. will try to defend his Dakar Rally victory with a new IVECO from his MM Technology team dubbed the EVO 4, which was revealed on Monday. Mitchel van den Brink and a third driver yet to be revealed will also race the truck.

The EVO 4 replaces the EVO 3 that won the latest Dakar in the Truck category with Macík. The winning truck, nicknamed Cenda, was sold to Firemen Dakarteam in June. Macík has another truck dubbed Frank, with which he won the Baja España Aragón in June and will keep in reserve for other events.

“The main focus in the development of the EVO 4 was to increase the reliability and durability of the individual parts, which is very important in a Dakar-type race,” Macík’s father Martin Sr., the team head of development, explained. “You don’t have round-the-clock maintenance, and it is desirable that the parts can withstand as much stress as possible for as long as possible, both mechanically and in terms of temperature fluctuations.

“Another important aspect for us was the comfort of the crew and overall stability. Our platform is rather low, and we use strong springs, which, while providing extreme stability for the entire truck, limit the comfort level in the cabin. Comfort is something you will appreciate over hundreds of kilometres of rough terrain, because if you physically overload the crew immediately after the first stage, the whole race becomes even more challenging.”

The truck is 6,950 millimetres long by 2,550 mm wide and 3,300 mm tall while weighing in at roughly 8,760 kilograms when empty. The chassis was designed in-house using 3D construction and built to be a “lightweight yet incredibly strong frame”.

Oriol Vidal‘s 2024 World Rally-Raid Championship is over. On Monday, he announced he will not run the Rallye du Maroc in October due to lingering pain from his back injury sustained at the Dakar Rally. Consequently, he will not be able to win the Challenger category’s championship for co-drivers.

Vidal is currently second in the Challenger navigator standings, trailing Nicolás Cavigliasso’s co-driver Valentina Pertegarini by five points. Marcelo Gastaldi’s partner Carlos Sachs is the only other co-driver with a shot at the title as he is third and thirty-five points back.

“It was a very difficult decision, but during the recent test in Morocco with the new Can-Am Factory Team, the symptoms were worse than ever so now I need to rethink the path to find a solution,” said Vidal.

“This means I am giving up on repeating the World Championship, but I will fight with all my strength to be at the Dakar Rally. We are currently doing more tests, and we will see what the future holds in the coming weeks.”

He suffered the injury at Dakar, where he and Rokas Baciuška finished third in Challenger. It was not much of an issue during the first half of the season as he continued to race, finishing second at the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge and winning the BP Ultimate Rally-Raid, before the pain started to kick in over the summer. Vidal attempted to recover without undergoing surgery, but was not cleared to do the Desafío Ruta 40 in June.

Before he heads to Morocco to wrap up the World Rally-Raid Championship, Tosha Schareina had a title to win in Switzerland. By winning the season finale, he secured the FIM E-Xplorer World Cup in his début season.

Schareina, team-mate Francesca Nocera, and Honda Racing Corporation entered the final weekend in Crans-Montana trailing Bonnel Racing by fourteen points. He was the fastest qualifier ahead of Round #3, after which he finished on the podium in all three races with a win, a third, and a second. Two more wins in the fifth and final race day, along with a second in between, clinched him the men’s championship.

Nocera suffered a hard crash on Friday that prevented her from qualifying. She was able to race anyway, though her injuries hampered her formance. Nevertheless, she managed to finish second in the women’s standings. Their combined efforts also lifted HRC past Bonnell’s Dylan Woodcock and Tanja Schlosser for the team Hyperbike championship.

“I’m absolutely thrilled to have secured the victory as the men’s World Champion in E-Xplorer,” said Schareina. “The team should be proud of all the hard work they’ve put in this season. I want to extend my congratulations to Francesca for never giving up and finishing the race after her fall on Friday.

“The CR Electric Proto has performed incredibly throughout the entire year, and the team has given their all. They should be proud.”

On 12 September, The Checkered Flag spoke with Justin Gerlach about his acceptance for the 2025 Dakar Rally, how he got there, and his plans.

The full transcript of the interview is available below. Some text has been altered from the actual dialogue to improve readability.

An article on the interview can be read here.

Transcript

TCF: It’s been about a month and a half since you were accepted for Dakar. Has it sunk in yet that you’re actually going to be there in about three months from now?

JG: No, not really. [laughs]

Nearly 400 vintage cars will make up the grid for the 24th edition of the Tour de Corse Historique in October.

Vehicles must be built between 1945 and 1990. 223 are entered under the Historic Racing Cars (VHC) category, which meets FIA regulation. While 1990 is the latest permitted, the regulations also permit touring cars as late as 1996 if they are street legal in France. VHC cars race under traditional rally, or Competition, rules.

159 are Historic Sports Regularity Vehicles (VHRS), which as the name suggests partake in regularity-based racing. As such, the class is split into high, intermediate, moderate, and low subdivisions based on engine size.

Five are Legends, which also follows a regularity-style format.

VHC cars will begin the rally on a different route from VHRS and Legends. On the first day, the former will kick off from Conca to Favone on an 8.1-kilometre course followed by Kamiesch to Col de Bavella; meanwhile, VHRS and Legends travel from Sorbollano to Zoza and from Gualdaricciu to Col de Pelza. The first day for VHC is primarily along the coast before climbing the Col de Bavella mountain, while VHRS and Legends are already at higher altitudes as they go through forests.

RBI Sport has created two new races to complement their returning slate in 2025. Besides the returning Rallye Breslau and Fenix Rally, the organisers will open with The ROCK Trophy for Extreme vehicles in Romania and the Baja Europe for Cross-Country competitors in Poland.

The ROCK Trophy will take place over five legs in April, intended for heavy-duty vehicles in a rock crawling-like environment similar to Ultra4. Cars built before 1995 will take part under the Legends subcategory. The race fills the void in Romania left by the Balkan Offroad Rallye, which was normally the final race of the year for RBI but cancelled for 2024.

Baja Europe was held for the first and only time in October 2019 in Żagań, Poland. Newly revived for 2025, the race is intended for Cross-Country cars, bikes, quads, and trucks. Held over two stages along with a Prologue, it will serve as a dress rehearsal for the Rallye Breslau as both events are on the military training grounds at Żagań.

Rallye Breslau, the largest amateur off-road race in Europe, celebrated its thirtieth anniversary in 2024. As is tradition, it will start in Żagań before heading to another army polygon at Drawsko Training Ground. For 2025, the race will have online servers to help competitors communicate with each other more efficiently. It is the lone round of the four in which Cross-Country and Extreme classes are invited.

The Fenix Rally is the only RBI event outside of Europe, held in Tunisia. Although usually held in the spring, it was moved to October for 2025 due to severe weather; heavy rain forced the fourth stage of the 2024 race to be called off. The move also provides an additional opportunity for those preparing for the Dakar Rally to gain desert rally experience.

With his team one step closer towards a SCORE International World Desert Championship, Carter Klein will spend the two-month break in Morocco trying his hand at the World Rally-Raid Championship. The Rallye du Maroc will be his first time competing in the series, doing so in the Rally2 category.

The younger brother of 2022 W2RC Rally2 champion and Dakar Rally competitor Mason Klein, he has been enjoying a breakout career in desert racing. The 20-year-old won the bike overall at SCORE’s Baja 1000 in 2023 as part of the #1X team led by Juan Carlos Salvatierra.

He moved to HERO Racing for the 2024 SCORE season, where he is sharing the #11X Honda with Ciaran Naran and Rider of Record Arturo Salas Jr. Although HERO is new to the premier Pro Moto Unlimited category, the #11X won in its class début at the San Felipe 250 then added another win at the Baja 500. The team came up just short at last Saturday’s Baja 400 where they finished runner-up, though they still have the advantage in the Pro Moto Unlimited standings going into the season-ending 1000.

Outside of SCORE, Klein won Best In The Desert’s inaugural 399 Pro title in 2020 and the 2022 AMA National Hare and Hound Championship in Pro 250. He and Mason have shared a bike in BITD competition, winning the Open Pro class at the 2023 Laughlin Desert Challenge.

Morocco will not be his first foray outside North America as he frequently supports Mason in the Brazilian Cross-Country Rally Championship and Sertões Series, where the elder Klein is a Honda factory rider. In August, the brothers went to Ecuador to compete in the Baja Manta Enduro Rally, where they finished 1–2 with Carter ahead.

Mick Schumacher has made it clear that Alpine Endurance Team “deserved this podium after fighting so hard,” following their first podium finish in the 2024 FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC). The French team survived a challenging and at times chaotic 6 Hours of Fuji to bring home a fantastic 3rd place finish for the #36 car, with the #35 relegated to 7th following a late penalty.

Charles Milesi ensured that the #35 Alpine A424 was a force to be reckoned with by putting in a great display in qualifying. The Frenchman qualified 6th fastest, just 0.002 seconds behind the championship leading and eventual race winning #6 Porsche Penske Motorsport. Following a clean first lap, the #35 car was an unfortunate victim in a first corner incident on lap 2, caused by #83 AF Corse Ferrari 499P locking up, creating a concertina-style crash that impacted multiple cars.

Both #35 and #36 cars immediately set about climbing back up the order, with the French team looking more competitive than ever in 2024. Milesi in #35 was particularly impressive, storming up the order to 3rd and setting the fastest lap of the race in the process, a 1:30.943. Unfortunately for the #35 crew, they were slapped with a drive-through penalty with just 25 minutes to go, dropping them from 3rd down to 10th. It is truly impressive that Milesi finished in 7th, pushing hard to fight back three places, finishing just 0.008 seconds ahead of the #94 Peugeot TotalEnergies team in a battle to the line.

Meanwhile, Schumacher kept fighting at the helm of the #36 car. Having benefited from the sister car’s misfortune, he made a great move to pass the #12 Hertz Team JOTA Porsche 963 with just 6 minutes of the 6 hour race left to run. Not only that, but in the remaining few minutes he managed to extend a gap of over 3 seconds to his nearest rival behind him. Alpine shared a podium with the #15 BMW M Team WRT crew who also celebrated their first podium of the year, a fantastic demonstration of how competitive and exhilarating WEC is.

“It’s a positive result for the team and everyone involved in the project” enthused the German driver. “We deserved this podium after fighting so hard when success wasn’t on our side until now. Fortunately, that wasn’t the case today, but we still have to work on our pace. We’re heading in the right direction, and we want more. We’re all here to win, so let’s keep giving it everything we’ve got.”

Trial and enduro star Sandra Gómez is the newest addition to the Fantic Rally Team, and will make her début at the Rallye du Maroc before running the 2025 Dakar Rally on a Fantic XEF 450 Rally.

Gómez is a two-time Spanish Women’s Trial Champion who has also competed at the FIM Trial European and World Championships, and is a six-time winner of the Women’s Trial des Nations for Spain. On the enduro side, she won the 2015 AMA Endurocross and 2016 FIM SuperEnduro World Championships on the women’s side. She also has three X Games medals in Enduro X, consisting of a bronze each at Barcelona and Munich in 2013 and a silver in 2014, and was the first woman to finish the Red Bull Romaniacs in the Gold class in 2020.

Although a GasGas factory rider in enduro and trials, Gómez raced a Husqvarna and KTM at her two Dakar Rally starts in 2022 and 2023. A longtime rally fan, the opportunity arose after training with help from current RallyGP competitor Lorenzo Santolino. She finished fortieth in her Dakar début, while her 2023 race was cut short by mechanical issues after five stages.

After the 2023 Dakar, she and Jorge Zaragoza won the inaugural FIM E-Xplorer World Cup for MIE Racing. She moved to INDE Racing for the 2024 season, who is third in the standings after two rounds alongside Runar Sudmann.

Morocco will be her first World Rally-Raid Championship outside of Dakar since the 2022 Andalucía Rally, where she finished eleventh in Rally2 and was runner-up in the FIM Women’s Trophy.