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The Budapest–Bamako Rally, the largest amateur rally raid in the world, had to make a slight detour from its intended route through Senegal as the country’s constitutional crisis and resulting protests continue.

Tuesday was supposed to be the ninth stage of the rally, taking competitors from the Mauritanian capital of Nouakchott across the border into Senegal before finishing in Richard Toll. However, Richard Toll will no longer be on the route and organisers plan to provide a new location for the bivouac in the morning.

Demonstrations have been ongoing in Senegal since June 2023 after opposition leader Ousmane Sonko was arrested and his party disbanded by President Macky Sall‘s administration. Although Sall is not running for re-election in 2024, he indefinitely postponed the presidential election scheduled for 25 February while various opposition members of parliament were physically barred from voting against his decree. The National Assembly voted on Monday to move the election to 15 December, which critics state would keep Sall in power beyond his scheduled term. As additional protests mounted in Dakar, internet services were restricted following the announcement to prevent them from organising, and rally officials warned that “mobile internet is limited” once they cross the border. At least twenty-three people have died in the protests.

With how quickly the situation can evolve, race organiser Géza Villám warned that “the plan we put together today might not be relevant tomorrow or the day after,” though he added he trusts Senegalese police to keep racers safe. Once they complete the Senegal portion of the route, however, rally founder András Gál Szabó noted Stages #12 through #14, which run through the Guinean cities of Labé and Kindia, could present challenges as the country continues to struggle with fuel shortages after an oil depot exploded in December.

As its name suggests, the Budapest–Bamako Rally runs from Europe and along West Africa, typically starting in Hungary before wrapping up in Mali. Budapest remained the starting point for the 2024 edition, but the finish was moved to Siaka Stevens National Stadium in Freetown, Sierra Leone, due to the ongoing civil war in Mali. Sierra Leone also underwent a coup d’état in 2023 that ultimately failed.

Gustavo Gugelmin is shutting off his roadbook and hanging up his helmet. On Monday, he announced he will not run the rest of the 2024 World Rally-Raid Championship to spend more time with his family. He did not necessarily call it a retirement, however, leaving the door open for a return in the future.

Gugelmin is a three-time Dakar Rally winner, scoring his first in 2018 in the UTV category (now SSV) with Reinaldo Varela. The Brazilians also won the 2012 FIA World Cup for Cross-Country Rallies in T2, the 2015 Rally dos Sertões in their home country, and the 2019 World Cup in T3. He later joined up with American desert racing ace Austin Jones, and they claimed the final T4 World Cup in 2021 before its reformation into the W2RC the following year. Their momentum continued under the new series as they topped T4 at Dakar before going on to finish third in the championship; Gugelmin is the first Brazilian with multiple Dakar victories.

The duo graduated to the T3 (now Challenger) class in 2023, and quickly made an impact by winning the Dakar again. They scrapped with fellow Red Bull racers Mitch Guthrie and Seth Quintero for the title, but came up short and settled for third in points.

“Gustavo’s been super important. In rally raid, your navigator is as important as the driver is, so I think we make a really good team,” Jones told The Checkered Flag during the 2023 season-ending Rallye du Maroc. “He’s been riding with me for I think four years, almost five years now, so we’ve got a really good system down. We got a good flow. Going on with him calling notes and me reacting to his stuff. He’s a great mechanic. That’s been huge because when something happens or we need to get out of the car and break out the tools, I can always count on Gustavo to be able to diagnose and fix the situation. Gustavo’s huge. He’s been a huge help and we make a really good team.”

Gugelmin’s final race, the 2024 Dakar Rally in January, ended with a fifth-place finish for him and Jones in Challenger.

Kyle Chaney was hoping to make his Can-Am Maverick R the first UTV ever to win the King of the Hammers‘ Nitto Race of Kings, and he did everything in his power to turn it into a reality. Despite breaking the left front suspension and driving with three wheels during the closing stretch, he managed to reach the finish before everyone else.

“This is probably the worst car I’ve drove,” said an emotional Chaney at the finish. “It was really bad all day and we just kind of kept it together. I don’t know if we blew our shocks in qualifying but I didn’t drive the car after qualifying and it was like we drove on blown shocks all day and they finally gave out at the end, but Terry (Madden) got me here to the end and here we are.”

Madden, a Baja star on the heels of winning the Baja 1000‘s Pro Stock UTV class in November with the legendary Block family, added “this is actually the last place I thought we’d be today. Our goal was to get it to the podium.”

It was a dream ending to a chaotic race week for Chaney, who flipped his car during qualifying for the Toyo Tires Desert Challenge, then bounced back by winning the Can-Am UTV Hammers Championship for the fourth year in a row. Unfortunately, the dream became a nightmare when he received 52 minutes and 10 seconds of penalties for missing a virtual checkpoint then taking a bypass while navigating through the Check Me Out sector.

“I was too focused on the 4900 race (UTV) that I did not do my homework on the 4400 (Race of Kings),” Chaney subsequently remarked. He officially finished eighth overall as a result.

Much like its ties to rallycross, the overlap between Extreme E and rally raid is staggeringly high, and NEOM McLaren XE will double dip into the discipline for the 2024 season as they enlist the services of Cristina Gutiérrez and Mattias Ekström.

Gutiérrez moves over from X44, with whom she won the 2022 championship alongside Sébastien Loeb (also a rally raid competitor). The team’s title defence in 2023 came with Gutiérrez and Fraser McConnell, who won twice at the first Hydro X Prix and second Island X Prix II but finished fourth in the standings.

McLaren’s announcement comes on the heels of Gutiérrez winning the 2024 Dakar Rally in the Challenger category, becoming just the second woman to win a Dakar overall after Jutta Kleinschmidt—herself an XE alumnus—in 2001. Gutiérrez was also the first female champion of the FIA World Cup for Cross-Country Rallies (predecessor to the current World Rally-Raid Championship) when she claimed the final T3 title in 2021.

Ekström arrives at McLaren after finishing twenty-sixth in the top-level Ultimate class at the Dakar. Despite his poor finish, he won a stage and helped Audi team-mate Carlos Sainz to the victory.

He was part of another rally raid-savvy duo at Sainz’s ACCIONA | Sainz XE Team during the 2023 season, pairing up with Laia Sanz while Sainz was out due to injury. The team broke through for their best campaign to date when they scored victories at the second Desert X Prix and first Island X Prix II, missing out on the championship by fifteen points.

Oleksandr Medvedchenko, one of the greatest drivers in Ukrainian history, received a two-year state scholarship from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on 22 December 2023.

Medvedchenko spent much of his career in the Soviet Formula Easter Championship; Formula Easter is an open-wheel spec for drivers living in the Eastern Bloc, who did not enter the standard global racing ladders due to the Cold War. The FIA never formally provided support to Formula Easter but otherwise acknowledged its existence. With no outside support, cars were exclusively built using parts from behind the Iron Curtain and Soviet-friendly COMECON (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance) members; Estonia, who had better access to the relevant technology, built many of the top Formula Easter cars including Medvedchenko’s.

He finished eleventh in his rookie season in 1976, then went on to claim five championships including four in a row from 1979 to 1982. He continued to be a regular until its dissolution alongside that of the Soviet Union in 1991, with his final championship run being a runner-up in the Formula 1600 standings.

Medvedchenko also raced in the Eastern Bloc’s Cup of Peace and Friendship‘s single-seater division, finishing third in the 1981 standings and runner-up in 1984.

In 1992, after the Soviet Union’s fall and his home country’s independence, Medvedchenko was recruited to race a KrAZ-5450 in the FIA European Truck Racing Championship. Beginning development in 1991, the truck did not resemble its production counterparts, a violation of series regulations; it used a two-stroke diesel engine from the Kharkiv-based Malyshev Factory, who specialised in building tanks, and was a two-axle model which was unheard of for the KrAZ line.

While committed to racing a Can-Am Maverick in the Challenger class for the 2024 World Rally-Raid Championship, Rokas Baciuška plans to graduate to the top-level Ultimate category for 2025. He will take another step towards that goal on 8–10 February when he enters the Saudi Baja in a Toyota Hilux T1+ from Overdrive Racing.

The Saudi Baja, the first round on the 2024 FIA World Baja Cup calendar, will be his second race in a Hilux. He made his Ultimate (then T1) début at the 2023 Baja España Aragón, where he finished ninth overall after a late penalty and tyre puncture ruined what was otherwise a third-place effort. The one-off came during a successful campaign in the W2RC as he won his second consecutive T4 (now SSV) class championship, building such a massive advantage in the standings that he already clinched it before the penultimate race; this allowed him to skip said round and move up to Challenger/T3 for the season finale without consequence. Baciuška retired from his maiden T3 race at the Rallye du Maroc.

He began 2024 by finishing third in class at the Dakar Rally. Since winner Cristina Gutiérrez is not racing for points, Baciuška sits second in the Challenger standings behind Mitch Guthrie.

“SSV and forest are good, but car and sand are even better,” said Baciuška. “We had little time to rest after Dakar. We rested but not a lot because of a short turnaround. I’m going to Saudi Arabia next week to Baja Hail where I will race a T1+ Ultimate with Toyota Overdrive. Our main goal is to compete in the 2025 Dakar Rally and World Championship with this car.”

Overdrive Racing is one of two W2RC teams that fields the Hilux along with Toyota Gazoo Racing. Guillaume de Mévius and Guerlain Chicherit combined to win three stages for Overdrive at the Dakar, and the former finished runner-up overall.

Iron Lynx have confirmed which drivers will be battling it out for them in the LMGT3 class of the 2024 FIA World Endurance Championship (WEC). The team is fielding a pair of Lamborghini Hurácan GT3 Evo 2 cars, including an all-female Iron Dames line-up in car #85.

2024 marks a switch for the Iron Lynx team. Despite being a Lamborghini factory team, they raced two Porsche 911 RSR-19s in the 2023 WEC as Lamborghini’s cars didn’t meet the required specifications. With the spec changes in place for 2024, the team can now race for Lamborghini proper. In addition to their LMGT3 efforts, the team is stepping up to the Hypercar class with their highly anticipated Lamborghini SC63.

Car # 60

Co-founder and part-owner of the Iron Lynx team, Claudio Schiavoni was already confirmed as a driver for the #60 car. He will be joined by long-time teammate Matteo Cressoni. The pair have already raced the Lamborghini together at the 2024 24 Hours of Daytona, where they unfortunately retired after 293 laps due to gearbox issues.

Joining the two Italians is Frenchman Franck Perera. The 39 year old Lamborghini Squadra Corse driver also competed for Iron Lynx at Daytona, finishing 7th in class in his Hurácan. Although making his WEC debut, he has experience of working with the team in America in 2023, having competed at Daytona, Sebring, and at Petit Le Mans at Road Atlanta.

Car #85 – The Iron Dames

The Iron Dames enjoyed a very competitive year in the 2023 WEC. Having achieved a perfect run of zero retirements, they narrowly missed out on a podium, finishing fourth at the Centenary 24 Hours of Le Mans. They climbed onto the rostrum at the 2023 6 Hours of Portimão before rounding off the season with a superb class win at the 2023 Bapco Energies 8 Hours of Bahrain.

Swiss-based food company SUN AG will field an Extreme E programme for the 2024 season dubbed SUN Minimeal Team. Timo Scheider and Klara Andersson will serve as drivers.

The Minimeal is SUN AG’s feature product, consisting of pocket-sized snacks that provide 100 kcal of energy apiece. They are plant-based foodstuffs drawing from sources like sunflowers, poppy speeds, and kale and mushroom powder. The company boasts that a person could consume eight Minimeals to cover the daily requirement of essential nutrients, while two Minimeals can provide a single sitting’s worth of food, making it ideal for those looking to lose weight or looking for easier healthy eating alternatives.

“Especially in racing, a performance-supporting diet is extremely important. SUN Minimeal is the simplest and safest way to eat healthily and sustainably,” said SUN CEO Wolfgang Grabher. “The special thing about it is that it contains all the natural nutrients in the right amount and with a low calorie content. The meal is especially appreciated by people who have little time, travel a lot and don’t want to miss out on a healthy diet.

“Our involvement in Extreme E will help us to globally present our innovation for healthy nutrition and our mission to reduce nutritional resources by 90 percent and reach up to 2.1 billion households.”

Scheider recently spent the 2023 season with Carl Cox Motorsport, then also in their maiden season, scoring a podium at the first Hydro X Prix alongside Christine GZ. He and Lia Block finished the year for the team, placing them ninth in the championship. He has been involved with the series since 2021 as a Championship Driver before competing for XITE Energy Racing the following year, bagging a runner-up finish in his racing début.

In 2023, James Hillier became the first Isle of Man TT winner to race the Dakar Rally. Although he took 2024 off, he hopes to be back for the 2025 edition.

“I do wish I was there. The plan is to go back next year,” said Hillier at the Autosport Show in NEC Birmingham. “Plans are kind of coming together with that now. The plan is to go back with a team and put a package together so there’s possibilities there. If anyone’s watching that is intending to do Dakar next year, maybe get in touch because the more of us that team together can bring the overall cost down and we’ll see. There’s loads going on that side of stuff, but main focus is North West TT.”

The 2013 Lightweight champion at Isle of Man, Hillier entered the 2023 Dakar Rally after earning his qualification with a fifteenth overall at the 2021 Andalucía Rally followed by an eighth in Rally2 at the 2022 Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge. He competed in the Original by Motul class (Malle Moto) for solo riders without assistance from a crew.

In Stage #5, he crashed and dislocated his collarbone, but he was still able to continue the race albeit at a slower pace than he would have liked. Hillier finished fifty-third overall among Rally2 riders and thirteenth in Malle Moto, with his best daily outing being a thirty-second in Stage #2.

“I wouldn’t say it was more than a tough two weeks,” he began while discussing the GasGas 450 Rally with which he raced, “but I went through quite a lot and spent many hours sat riding this thing and learned a lot, smiled a lot, cried, bled, just everything. It means a lot to me, this bike. Rally bikes, they do look different, but they just tell a bit more of a story, especially this as it’s done Dakar.”

As the push for alternative methods of propulsion like electric and hybrid power continues, the Amaury Sport Organisation wanted to put these vehicles to the test in one of the toughest races in the world without throwing them to the wolves right away. Thus, the 2024 Dakar Rally marked the début of Mission 1000, a separate class for bikes and cars operating on non-gas sources.

Ironically, the top performing Mission 1000 vehicle ended up being one that already challenged the Dakar Rally. KH-7 Ecovergy Team‘s MAN TGA 26.480 6×6, which raced the 2023 Dakar but was not classified in the main Truck category due to its hydrogen fuel cell, was easily the fan favourite of the nine Mission 1000 entries as it completed every stage and won both Fan Boost votes by convincing margins.

Piloted by Jordi Juvanteny, the truck—now boasting a hydrogen and hydrotreated vegetable oil mix—was the only vehicle to run the full distance on all eleven days of competition. It earned Sport Mode, which meant beating the reference time by ten percent, on five occasions. The Fan Boost votes, each awarding five points to the winner, were also lopsided as they had over 2,600 votes in the first compared to just 1,200 for runner-up Tacita, before notching over 1,400 in the second with nobody else breaking quadruple digits.

Jean-Michel Paulhe‘s hydrogen-based Can-Am Maverick finished second overall, while the Arctic Leopard electric bike of Su Wenmin was third. Another pair of electric bikes fielded by Tacita, who previously dabbled in the 2020 Dakar Rally, overcame Oscar Polli not starting the opening stage to have both reach the end.

“As the sun sets on our Dakar Future Mission 1000 adventure, our hearts are overflowing with emotions,” reads a statement from Tacita. “We poured not just work, energy, tears, and sweat into this project, but above all, a massive amount of passion for this challenge and the Dakar spirit. Taking part in the Dakar has been an all-time dream, and seeing it come to life this year, with Tacita, is nothing short of extraordinary. Every team member, rider, and electric motorbike enthusiast who joined us on this journey added their unique spark.
But it’s not just the end of a race, it’s the beginning of a legacy. Tacita Discanto is like a child: it has to grow, has to improve, and win hearts all over the world. Here’s to the thrill of Dakar, the power of electric dreams, and the unbreakable bond that fueled us through every challenge.”

The 2024 Dakar Rally‘s Quad category was rather barren compared to previous years with just ten entries compared to nineteen in 2023, owing to tightened eligibility requirements from the Amaury Sport Organisation that require everyone to have prior World Rally-Raid Championship experience or be signed up for it. On the other hand, this meant all ten riders are earning points towards the 2024 championship.

Although many usual faces like Pablo Copetti and W2RC runner-up Rodolfo Guillioli did not return while former winners Alejandro and Marcos Patronelli aborted their plans of racing, Manuel Andújar and Alexandre Giroud took up the challenge of putting on a good show in the face of reduced numbers. Giroud looked to be the first Quad rider to three-peat, but Andújar—the category’s last winner in 2021 prior to Giroud’s streak—narrowly held off late charge by Giroud to score the win.

Andújar had contended with Giroud late in the 2023 edition before being forced to drop out by mechanical trouble. This time, his Yamaha Raptor 700 did not let him down. Finishing on the stage podium for the first three days and winning Stage #4 gave him the overall lead, which he never relinquished.

It was not just cruising, however, as he had Giroud breathing down his neck. In fact, Giroud probably could have had a chance if not for a Stage #2 engine change that dealt him a fifteen-minute time penalty. After Andújar left Stage #4 with a 21-minute edge over him, Giroud sliced down the margin to under six and a half minutes with the help of five stage wins and Andújar’s own penalty for swapping engines.

However, Andújar’s Stage #10 victory fluffed the gap back up to eight minutes. Giroud won the final two stages, but Andújar was right behind him both days, trailing by thirty-seven seconds in Stage #11 and fifteen seconds in Stage #12 to render the deficit virtually unaffected.

Tobias Ebster‘s uncle Heinz Kinigadner was a rally raid icon in the 1990s, but was never able to cross the Dakar Rally off his list of achievements. Twenty-four years after his last start, “Mini Kini” carried on the family legacy.

Ebster dominated the Original by Motul (also known as Malle Moto) category for riders competing without assistance from teams, beating runner-up Jérôme Martiny by over two hours and finishing eighth in the larger Rally2 class. He got off to a fast start by winning the Prologue, then claimed all but two legs including a Stage #5 showing in which he beat everyone in Rally2, edging out then-overall leader Romain Dumontier by thirty-two seconds.

The win adds to a young but already very impressive rally raid career for the Austrian, who only started competing in them in 2022. Although fairly new to the discipline, Ebster quickly made an impact when he won Rally2 outright in his World Rally-Raid Championship début at the 2023 Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge to clinch his ticket to Dakar. Although his Dakar dress rehearsal later that year at the Rallye du Maroc was cut short by a dislocated shoulder moments after starting the race, he recovered in time to pick up where he left off.

His health continued to take a beating during the Dakar as he dealt with rib pain and nausea, prompting him to take painkillers when able such as during refuel points. He was one of many victims of the infamous 48-hour Chrono Stage, crashing in a chott at KM 153, but won the stage nonetheless.

He is the only rider of those entered in OBM who is also earning W2RC points, and leaves the Dakar seventh in the Rally2 standings.

Rally raid’s side-by-side classes have been a playground for Can-Am in recent years, having won the Dakar Rally every year since 2018 in both the production-based T4 (now SSV) and race-spec T3 (Challenger) divisions. Hoping to break their iron fist, Polaris elected to break out their Polaris RZR Pro R Factory that dominated the deserts of Baja California in 2023 for the 2024 Dakar Rally, fielded by Sébastien Loeb Racing.

Despite being severely outnumbered by Can-Am Mavericks, Polaris Factory Racing technical director Alex Scheuerell told The Checkered Flag he was “very confident” that the Pro R Factory can impress with Xavier de Soultrait and Florent Vayssade behind the wheel. Soultrait did not let him down.

In just his second Dakar on four wheels after previously competing on a bike, Soultrait held off the Can-Am of Jérôme de Sadeleer for Polaris’ first Dakar victory since Leandro Torres won the inaugural SSV class crown in 2017; Polaris had also won adjacent SSV classes at the Dakar every year since 2013, making 2024 their seventh win total. Soultrait set the tone early by winning the Prologue before a run by Can-Ams took place over the first four stages with those like Gerard Farrés and World Rally-Raid Championship favourites João Ferreira and Sara Price leading the way.

Soultrait broke the trend with back-to-back wins in Stage #5 and the Chrono Stage, moving him up to third overall. He took the top spot from Seaidan after finishing second to Ferreira in Stage #7. Seaidan struggled the next day and fell off, as did Ferreira a stage later due to losing fuel pressure, which gave Soultrait a half-hour cushion over the field. This was quickly whittled down when he received ten minutes of penalties for not letting the faster Price overtake him during Stage #10, and Sadeleer winning the penultimate leg enabled him to slice the gap down to less than three minutes.

Although Sadeleer beat Soultrait in Stage #12, he only did so by twenty-four seconds. Vayssade won the stage to cap off an impressive effort for SLR and the Pro R Factory.

IndyCar veteran Marco Andretti will attempt to qualify for the Indianapolis 500 this year the same way he has for the past three: as a one-off affair with Andretti Global’s (formerly Andretti Autosport) #98 car. This May will mark the 36-year-old’s 19th consecutive start at the Speedway.

While never a winner at Indianapolis, Andretti has found some success in the past. Notably, the Nazareth, PA native has four top-three finishes, including a storied second-place finish in his 2006 rookie effort. Marco also raced to the pole in 2020, before falling to 13th-place finish on race day. Recent success at the 500 has been scarce for Michael’s son, with an average finish of 18th since 2018.

Andretti’s focus lies mainly with NASCAR this year. Earlier this week, he announced a split schedule with the Craftsman Truck Series and the ARCA Menards Series. Andretti is set to run 20 races across both series throughout the season.

Practice for the 108th Running of the Indianapolis 500 begins on May 14th.