Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

The 2024 Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge will start on the same day as the 2023 edition, but is slightly shorter in terms of raceable distance at 1,180 kilometres in Selective Sections compared to last year’s 1,286. However, the Emirates Motorsports Organization is making up for the decreased length in the form of a “revamped format” that inludes a second bivouac and updated route.

Although there are 106 fewer kilometres in SS, the 2024 ADDC is longer overall because of its 963 km in liaison sections that boosts the total distance to 2,143. As the race name suggests, 55 percent of the route is in open desert with 35 percent of dunes.

Final technical inspection will take place at the Abu Dhabi Energy Centre before the grid heads to the first bivouac in Al Dhannah for the five-km Prologue on 26 February. Al Dhannah is also the site of the opening stage.

The second bivouac is in Mzeer’ah in the Liwa desert. While Liwa already hosts the bulk of the rally, 2024 is the first time that it also has a bivouac. Mzeer’ah will be the start and finish for Stages #3 and #4.

The fifth and final day will take the race back to Abu Dhabi.

One of the most decorated rally raid pairings has broken up as Nasser Al-Attiyah and Mathieu Baumel part ways after a decade together. Neither have announced their partners for the rest of the 2024 World Rally-Raid Championship, though reports have indicated Édouard Boulanger will become Al-Attiyah’s navigator starting with the upcoming Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge.

Al-Attiyah and Baumel began working together in 2015, quickly making waves when they won the Dakar Rally. From there, they added three more Dakars in 2019, 2022, and 2023, as well as back-to-back W2RC titles. The duo also won the W2RC’s predecessor FIA World Cup for Cross-Country Rallies four times from 2015 to 2017 and 2021, as well as the 2023 World Cup for Cross-Country Bajas (now World Bajas Cup). The lattermost made them the first to win both the rally raid and Bajas world titles in the same year.

Their successes also extended to traditional rallying, winning five Middle Eastern Rally Championships in 2015 and from 2019 to 2023 as well as the 2015 World Rally Championship-2.

However, the relationship fell apart during the 2024 W2RC season opener at the Dakar. Now racing for Prodrive after moving over from Toyota, they won a stage but were forced to retire halfway through the rally after suffering an engine failure, one of many mechanical issues that plagued their car. Two weeks after the Dakar, Giovanni Bernacchini replaced Baumel as Al-Attiyah’s rally navigator for the MERC’s Qatar International Rally, where Al-Attiyah’s bad start to 2024 continued as he received an early penalty before retiring on the final day.

Although a disappointing end, both gave an amicable joint statement on Monday thanking each other.

With Chip Ganassi Racing departing Extreme E, it is perhaps fitting that former CGR driver Jimmie Johnson will fill the void when his Legacy Motor Club enters the series for 2024.

Johnson will team up with Gray Leadbetter for much of the 2024 season, though the team’s début at this weekend’s Desert X Prix will have Travis Pastrana in the car as Johnson is focusing on the Daytona 500. Pastrana and Johnson are friends who have raced together in NASCAR and the 2022 Race of Champions.

Legacy Motor Club races in the NASCAR Cup Series with John Hunter Nemechek and Erik Jones as full-time drivers while Johnson is scheduled to enter nine races in a third car. Johnson, a seven-time Cup champion, co-owns the team with Maury Gallagher while fellow NASCAR legend Richard Petty, who formerly owned the operation, serves as ambassador.

Although much of his career is defined by his NASCAR successes, Johnson began in off-road racing. After growing up in motocross, he starred in Mickey Thompson Entertainment Group’s stadium truck series and the Short-course Off-road Drivers Association before dabbling in long-distance desert races such as SCORE International’s Baja 1000. He only occasionally returned to off-road for events like ROC, and he and Pastrana finished runner-up in the 2022 edition’s Nations Cup in the snow and ice of Sweden.

“Our goal is to learn as much as we can and see what the future might bring,” said Johnson. “The fact this series competes globally and focuses on sustainably, inclusion, and equality really piques our interest. From a technical standpoint, the changeover to hydrogen in 2025 is really intriguing and the entire motorsports community is watching closely. Personally for me as a driver, going back to my off-road roots and to the type of racing I started my career with is going to be a blast.”

Baja California is a hub for desert racing, and NORRA is one of those injecting a bit of rally flavour into the region with its multi-day races Mexican 1000 and NORRA 500. The sanctioning body wants to further deliver this experience in 2024 by naming Dakar Rally veteran Jimmy Lewis as motorcycle race director. As part of his responsibilities, Lewis will design the course for bikes that emphasises what NORRA calls “easy navigation to rival off-road riding found anywhere in the world.”

He runs the Jimmy Lewis Off-Road Riding School in Pahrump, Nevada, which teaches the essentials of riding off-road bikes along with rally-oriented classes like navigation. Many top American racers have attended the school to hone their skills including reigning Dakar Rally champion Ricky Brabec, Andrew Short, and Sara Price; Price, who won a Dakar stage in the SSV category in January, specifically singled out training with Lewis when she spoke with The Checkered Flag last spring. The school also maintains a partnership with NORRA, providing both online courses and free training.

Lewis himself more than lives up to the school’s reputation as well, having enjoyed success across virtually every form of off-road motorcycle racing. In 1991, he and Team USA won the FIM International Six Days Enduro’s Junior Trophy for the Americans’ first victory at the legendary event since 1973. Seven years later, he conquered the Baja 1000 bike overall.

As a BMW factory rider, Lewis entered his first Paris–Dakar Rally in 1996. The following year, he scored a stage win and was the best single-cylinder bike finisher in fourth. Despite missing the overall podium that race, he finally broke through in 2000 when he placed third overall to become just the second American podium finisher at the Dakar, while also winning the two-cylinder subcategory. A month later, he won the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge, a current round of the World Rally-Raid Championship, and remains its only outright winner from the United States. Lewis’ final Dakar in 2001 ended with a crash.

Although his competitive days have since come to an end, he is helping others break into the off-road racing world themselves. He also works as the course director for the Rebelle Rally and King of the Motos. His contributions earned him the 2017 Impact Award from the Off-Road Motorsports Hall of Fame.

Aliyyah Koloc might only be nineteen but she already has a very diverse racing portfolio that spans multiple disciplines and surfaces. This will continue in 2024 when she pursues the World Rally-Raid Championship and FIA Middle East Baja Cup in the off-road realm as well as the 24H Series on pavement.

“It’s not easy to alternate between off-road rallying and circuits, but I am getting used to it,” Koloc commented. “It becomes easier each time to quickly switch and adapt to a very different car that I’m about to race in. It is all a matter of not transferring bad habits from the terrain to the circuits and vice versa.”

Her calendar began with the W2RC’s Dakar Rally in January, where she ran her maiden Dakar in the top-level Ultimate class after making her début in 2023 in a side-by-side. Racing a Red-Lined REVO T1+, she suffered a front axle failure in Stage #2 that dropped her down the order early on, but managed to finish twenty-fifth in Ultimate with a best stage outing of twenty-fourth in Stage #5.

This weekend, a month after the Dakar, Koloc entered the Middle East Baja Cup’s season-opening Saudi Baja and placed fifth in Ultimate. She will be going for her second championship in the four-race series after winning in 2022.

In two weeks, she returns to the W2RC for the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge. She scored a class podium at the 2023 edition when she finished third in T3 (now Challenger). The W2RC consists of five rounds total.

Carl Cox Motorsport is the third team to drop out of the Extreme E grid ahead of the 2024 season, but it is only a year off before resuming operations when the series becomes Extreme H in 2025.

The team made their début in 2023, beginning the season with Timo Scheider and Christine GZ as drivers before Lia Block replaced the latter for the second half. CCM finished the season ninth in points with a best finish of third courtesy of Scheider and GZ at the first Hydro X Prix. Scheider has since left for SUN Minimeal Team while Block is focusing on formula racing.

“We’re delighted that our Extreme E drivers have excelled, with Timo launching his own team and Lia moving into the world of F1 Academy,” said team principal Alon Shulman. “With the first officially sanctioned FIA hydrogen race series kicking off in 2025, our preparations for Carl Cox Motorsport Extreme H are firmly underway.”

Besides CCM, Chip Ganassi Racing and X44 have also closed up shop. Although the loss of so many teams might raise concern from fans, it is important to note that the series is entering what is basically a throwaway year as it transitions to Extreme H.

“Being invited to bring Carl Cox Motorsport into the highly-anticipated Extreme H series that launches in 2025 feels like a leap into the future,” Cox stated. “We’ll be working closely with the Extreme E family over the next twelve months as we prepare to launch our championship campaign in the ground-breaking new car. We are most definitely in it to win it.”

The Dakar Rally and Baja 1000 are two of the most iconic off-road races in the world, but while there are plenty of people who have raced both, it is more difficult for vehicles to do because FIA and FIM regulations differ from SCORE International‘s. In 2024, SCORE will provide an avenue for rally raid bikes in the form of the Pro Moto Adventure class.

Pro Moto Adventure bikes are defined by SCORE as “motorcycles equipped with front windscreen / tower and large capacity fuel tanks.” They must have single-cylinder engines that displace between 250cc and 650cc; modern rally bikes such as those competing in the World Rally-Raid Championship and FIM Bajas World Cup are limited to 450cc, easily meeting the requirement, and the latter has also introduced a Trail category for those over 600cc for the 2024 season. While the Bajas World Cup allows both single- and twin-cylinder engines, the W2RC restricts it to just one cylinder.

This opens the door for bikes that one will often see at the Dakar and other W2RC rounds like the Kove 450 Rally and Hero 450 Rally. On the other hand, adventure bikes such as the 2024 Africa Eco Race-winning Aprilia Tuareg 660 miss the cut either because they are dual-cylinder engines or the displacement is slightly out of range.

Unlike their desert racing counterparts, rally bikes feature a navigation tower at the front upon which a roadbook is attached, though the mount to hold one is not required here since SCORE does not use roadbooks. The tower must have a surface area of at least 120 square inches, and riders are to set it up before technical inspection at each event.

Pro Moto Adventure is a Pro class, meaning competitors pay an entry fee of USD$2,900 before the application ($3,100 if done after). Entrants in the category are assigned a number between #800X and #899X. Although a typical SCORE race runs for one day as opposed to multiple like a rally, the former is much longer distance-wise than an individual rally stage so Adventure riders may go solo or split the bike with team-mates.

Former Dakar Rally navigator and mechanic Rosendo Touriñan Morist died Wednesday at the age of 74.

Touriñan started working alongside fellow Catalan Juan Porcar at the 1986 Paris–Dakar Rally; Porcar had been racing the Dakar on a bike before switching to a car in 1984. They raced a Range Rover early in their partnership, finishing tenth overall in 1987 and running as high as second in the 1989 Prologue, before switching to a Nissan Patrol. They enjoyed their best finish in 1990 of eight. The duo ran their final Dakar together in 1997, finishing eighteenth.

During his fourteen Dakars with Porcar, Touriñan got to showcase his expertise and improvisational skills, once using a sardine can to fix a mechanical issue. Many also leaned on him for his friendliness; Fernando Capdevila, a multi-time Canary Islands Rally Champion and World Rally Championship alumnus, recalled Touriñan lending his Lérida shop to make last-second engine repairs during his Dakar début in 1988.

Although no longer with Porcar, he continued to race the Dakar with Nissan. In 1999, he called the shots on the Nissan Terrano II of Rafael Santiveri, and they won the 1999 edition in the T1 Diesel category (thirty-seventh overall). The following year, Tourinan scored his third outright top ten with Ramon Vila Altima in tenth, and later also worked with Josep Maria Garrofé. His final Dakar in 2009 came in a Bowler Nemesis piloted by Antonio Vico Cordoba.

Outside of navigating, Touriñan was a contributor to SoloAuto4x4 magazine. Porcar also entered the media realm as a journalist providing Spanish coverage of the Dakar Rally and working with Jaime Alguersuari Sr. at RPM Racing.

MMP Compétition‘s Yasir Seaidan will continue working with the Metge family in 2024, albeit a slightly different one. After Adrien Metge served as his co-driver for the Dakar Rally, older brother Michaël Metge will take over for the rest of the World Rally-Raid Championship starting with the upcoming Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge.

The Metge brothers finished next to each other at Dakar. Michaël and his driver Jérôme de Sadeleer, an MMP team-mate, narrowly missed out on the SSV category victory when they finished second overall and just two-and-a-half minutes behind Xavier de Soultrait, while Seaidan and Adrien were third.

Seaidan won Stage #3 to take the SSV overall lead before losing the spot to Soultrait. A poor Stage #8 dropped Seaidan over an hour behind Soultrait and Sadeleer. Since Soultrait and Sadeleer are not racing for the W2RC, Seaidan exited Dakar as the SSV points leader with seventeen- and eighteen-point advantages over fellow Can-Am drivers Sara Price (finished fourth) and João Ferreira (fifth).

Both Metge brothers switched to co-driving after racing the Dakar on a bike, with Michaël doing seven on two wheels before entering the co-driver’s seat in 2022.

2024 is Seaidan’s first time competing in the full World Rally-Raid Championship after exclusively racing the Dakar in 2022 and 2023 with Alexey Kuzmich as navigator. He finished fourth in the 2023 FIA Middle East Baja Cup standings after winning his only start of the season at his home country’s Saudi Baja.

Chip Ganassi Racing will not race in Extreme E in 2024, wrapping up operations after competing since the inaugural season three years prior. However, the team is open to returning to the championship when it transitions to the hydrogen-powered Extreme H in 2025.

CGR’s Extreme E division was close partners with General Motors, who provided support via the GMC Hummer EV brand that includes their Spark ODYSSEY 21 sporting a nose modelled after said vehicle. Since the Hummer is an electric vehicle, its role will not be necessary once Extreme E commits to hydrogen.

“We sincerely thank Extreme E for welcoming our GMC Hummer EV entry as part of their innovative series and look forward to following the series’ growth,” reads a CGR statement. “We will be watching closely as the series, and its technical partners continue to push motorsports in their move upward and into a modernised off-road hydrogen-powered race car for 2025 and beyond.”

One of two U.S.-based outfits on the grid, the team débuted in 2021 with an all-American driver lineup of Kyle LeDuc and Sara Price. They finished eighth in points and failed to podium in their first year, but broke through in 2022 when they won the first Island X Prix. LeDuc exited the series before the final round of 2022 to undergo cancer treatment and fellow short course star RJ Anderson filled in, bringing them home fourth in the championship.

Anderson and Amanda Sorensen comprised CGR’s final driver lineup in 2023. They finished fifth in the standings with a pair of podiums in Scotland and Sardinia.

After coming up short in the 2023 Extreme E championship pursuit, ACCIONA | Sainz XE Team will run it back with Laia Sanz while adding Fraser McConnell to replace the outgoing Mattias Ekström.

McConnell moves over from X44, who won twice in his first full year in the series but shut down at season’s end. Primarily a rallycross driver, he entered Extreme E as the Championship Driver in mid-2022 before making his début at that year’s Energy X Prix with JBXE. The team finished ninth in that round.

“Receiving the call from Carlos (Sainz) asking me to join the team was such a surreal moment for me because growing up I was such a big fan and still to this day, he is such an inspiration,” said McConnell. “He is also still such a fierce competitor so having that energy within the team is definitely going to help us win races and I am sure I will be able to learn many things from him.”

Meanwhile, Sanz and Ekström spearheaded ACCIONA | Sainz’s breakout season as they won twice but finished fifteen points shy of the championship. Ekström has since departed for McLaren.

Sainz and Sanz will return to Saudi Arabia for the XE season opener on 17/18 February, a month after the former won the Dakar Rally for the fourth time. Sanz finished fifteenth in the top-level Ultimate category.

Former Dakar Rally competitor and actor Philippe Moustelou died Sunday at the age of 64. His service will take place on Thursday afternoon at the Saint Laurent Church in Roujan, France, having returned from Morocco shortly before his passing.

Moustelou entered the Paris–Dakar Rally in 1985, racing a Mercedes 280 GE with Jean-Paul Boisgontier as his navigator. However, they failed to finish the race.

A resident of Ouarzazate, Morocco, he spent much of his time afterwards competing in domestic rallies including the Atlas Rally, the predecessor to the modern-day Rallye du Maroc. He also helped organise and oversee other rallies in Morocco.

Outside of racing, he enjoyed acting and either worked behind the scenes or was an extra for various films produced in Africa such as Last Journey of Paul W.R. and De sable et de feu.

“Curious about others and nature, he loved to connect with people with his communicative smile,” reads a statement from Ouarzazate Guest House. “He never stopped improving his picturesque guesthouse in Tiffoultoute to warmly welcome his guests. He had a unique talent for maintaining and developing relationships with his Moroccan neighbors.

Dania Akeel will be in the cockpit of some new machines in 2024. Fresh off running the Dakar Rally in a Taurus T3 Max and set to race a Toyota Hilux Overdrive at the Saudi Baja this weekend, she will also get behind the wheel of a Spark ODYSSEY 21. On Wednesday, JBXE announced Akeel will team up with the returning Andreas Bakkerud for the 2024 Extreme E season.

Akeel adds to an already loaded group of drivers with rally raid experience to also dabble in the electric off-road series. This company includes new McLaren driver Cristina Gutiérrez, who also races a Taurus in the World Rally-Raid Championship and won the 2024 Dakar Rally in her and Akeel’s Challenger category; Akeel retired halfway through with a clutch failure while running twelfth in class. Both drivers will eventually move up to the W2RC’s top Ultimate category, with Akeel already preparing for her Ultimate début at the Saudi Baja.

She is the first Saudi woman to race the Dakar when she entered the 2022 edition, two years after the race moved to her home country. After the Saudi Baja, the first round of the FIA World and European Baja Cups, she won’t have to travel far for the Extreme E season opener as it also kicks off the following week in Saudi Arabia with the Desert X Prix on 17/18 February.

“I’m very excited to join the fun that I’ve been witnessing at Extreme E since it started,” said Akeel. “Sport is the perfect medium for both work and play, and I’m looking forward to what I’ll learn in this type of racing. Being home for the first round will have its comforts, and I couldn’t ask for a nicer start.

“Thank you to the JBXE team for this opportunity. Working with Jenson (Button) is a true privilege given his incredible career, and I aim to deliver my absolute best for us all.”

After racing since the inaugural season in 2021, X44 will no longer be on the Extreme E grid for 2024.

Owned by Formula One great Lewis Hamilton, the team quickly established themselves as one of the top outfits. After losing the 2021 title on a tiebreaker, ironically to Hamilton’s old F1 rival Nico Rosberg’s Rosberg X Racing, Cristina Gutiérrez and Sébastien Loeb broke through for the 2022 championship. Fraser McConnell replaced Loeb in 2023, and he and Gutiérrez won twice at Hydro X Prix Race #1 and Island X Prix II Race #2 en route to a fourth in points.

X44’s departure comes on the heels of Rodin Motorsport fully taking over the assets of Carlin Racing. Carlin became X44’s technical partner for 2023, replacing Prodrive.

“After three years as part of the Extreme E family, we’re today announcing that X44 will be departing the series,” reads a team statement. “We’ve had an incredible three seasons competing as X44, winning multiple races and even a world championship.

“Thank you to our drivers Cristina, Fraser, and Seb, and all our talented teammates who worked hard to help us achieve everything we did. Even more than the results on track, we’re proud to have been part of a bigger conversation about how to make motorsport more sustainable, of our success in giving people from all kinds of backgrounds an opportunity to thrive in this team, and of the legacy our team owner Lewis will leave behind with the Racing for All programme.

The Dacia Sandriders will come together for their first session as a team in March, immediately after the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge, where they’ll begin testing their eponymous car. The Sandrider is scheduled to make its racing début at the Rallye du Maroc in October before pursuing the World Rally-Raid Championships in 2025 and 2026.

The car was revealed in late January with Nasser Al-Attiyah, Cristina Gutiérrez, and Sébastien Loeb as drivers. Al-Attiyah and Loeb already compete for Dacia’s technical partner Prodrive in the Hunter while Gutiérrez races in the Challenger category. While the former two will run the full W2RC campaigns over the next two years, team principal Tiphanie Isnard noted Gutiérrez’s timetable could vary since she does not have as much experience in the top-level Ultimate class.

“We’re keeping our options open for Cristina because we want to support her as she tackles increasingly tougher challenges,” Isnard told W2RC.com. “She’ll be developing a lot, so we’ll take it step by step and expand her calendar when the right time comes. They’re all free to race for any constructor in the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge, but in early March we’ll start our development and intensive testing schedule. They’ll have access to all the engineering data for the Sandrider and, from that moment on, they’ll be Dacia factory drivers. We won’t bar them from taking a Hunter or even a T3 out for a spin so they can stay sharp, but the Dacia testing programme will be the top priority.”

Gutiérrez won the season-opening Dakar Rally in the Challenger category. Al-Attiyah won a stage in Ultimate but retired halfway, while Loeb finished third overall with five stage victories. Neither Loeb nor Gutiérrez are racing for W2RC points, unlike Al-Attiyah who is pursuing his third consecutive title. Al-Attiyah joined Prodrive for 2024 after seven years at Toyota.

The Dacia programme is contracted through the 2027 Dakar Rally.