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The twelfth and final stage of the forty-sixth Dakar Rally took place Friday with a short sprint in Yanbu. With how short the leg was at just 175 kilometres in Selective Sections, not much could really be done for those too far back in the overall to have a shot at the victory, so the most they could do was at least go out with a stage win.

Sébastien Loeb was one of these cases as a disastrous Stage #11 doomed his chances of catching Carlos Sainz in the overall, dropping him to third and over an hour and forty minutes back. While he held off Guillaume de Mévius for the Stage #12 win by five minutes, it was not enough to overtake him for second and certainly nowhere near getting close to Sainz. Regardless, he ends the rally with an Ultimate-leading five stage wins.

“It’s finally a podium for us, so I would say it’s not so bad when you look to yesterday when we are sitting on a stone and waiting for the truck. At the end, it’s not too bad,” Loeb stated. “I think our chance against Audi were quite small when you see the stages we had and they were driving two cars together and so on. Yeah, we tried. We lost the second place. We are third, but finally at the finish line so not too bad.”

Others came up just short in their pursuits. Alexandre Giroud defeated Manuel Andújar for the stage win by fifteen seconds, but he was unable to prevent Andújar from killing his hopes of a third straight Dakar as he entered Friday trailing by eight minutes. Likewise, defending Rally2 winner Romain Dumontier finished runner-up and a minute ahead of the fifth-placed Harith Noah, though he would have needed to make up five more minutes to repeat.

Jérôme de Sadeleer beat Xavier de Soultrait for the final spot on the SSV stage podium, though only by twenty-four seconds and thus failed to crack his two-and-a-half-minute advantage. De Soultrait’s Sébastien Loeb Racing team-mate Florent Vayssade scored his first stage win on four wheels.

Car racing is a sport that combines speed, skill, and strategy. Successful racing drivers use a variety of tactics to gain an edge over their competitors. Here are some key tactics often employed in car racing:

1. Qualifying Strategy

• Optimal Lap: In qualifying sessions, the focus is on setting the fastest possible lap time. This involves finding the right balance between aggressive driving and preserving the car's condition.
• Track Positioning: Drivers try to position themselves on the track to avoid traffic and get a clear lap.

2. Start/Restart Tactics

• Quick Reaction: A fast reaction to the starting lights or flag is crucial to gain positions early.
• Positioning: Placing the car strategically to block opponents or find a faster line through the first few corners.

3. Overtaking

• Slipstreaming/Drafting: Following closely behind another car to reduce air resistance and then using the saved energy to slingshot past.
• Out-Braking: Overtaking on the inside of a corner by braking later than the opponent.
• Switchback Maneuvers: Feinting to overtake on one side, then switching to the other side to catch the opponent off guard.

4. Defensive Driving

• Blocking: Strategically positioning the car to prevent others from overtaking.
• Controlling Pace: Slowing down at certain points on the track to disrupt the rhythm of the pursuing driver.

5. Pit Stop Strategy

• Timing: Deciding the optimal time for pit stops to refuel, change tires, or repair damage.
• Tire Choice: Choosing the right type of tires based on weather and track conditions.

6. Fuel Management

• Conserving Fuel: Adjusting driving style to save fuel when necessary, such as lifting off the accelerator early before braking.
• Fuel Mapping: Using different engine settings to either conserve or burn more fuel depending on the race strategy.

7. Tire Management

• Pacing: Balancing speed with the need to preserve tire life over a stint.
• Heat Management: Keeping tires within their optimal temperature range for performance.

8. Adapting to Conditions

• Weather Adaptation: Adjusting driving style and car setup for changes in weather, like rain or varying track temperatures.
• Track Evolution: Adapting to changes in the track’s grip levels as more rubber is laid down.

9. Psychological Warfare

• Intimidation: Using close driving to pressure the opponent into making a mistake.
• Mind Games: Using various tactics to unsettle or distract opponents.

10. Teamwork in Team Races

• Drafting and Slingshotting: Working with teammates to outpace opponents.
• Strategic Positioning: One car blocking for the other or running interference.

Safety and Sportsmanship

• Always remember that while tactics are important, they should never compromise safety.
• Respect for fellow competitors and adherence to the rules and regulations of the sport is paramount.

In motor racing, the best drivers are those who can adapt their tactics to the specific demands of each race, track, and situation. They must possess not only the skill to drive at the limit but also the mental acuity to make split-second decisions based on their strategy.

Sébastien Loeb‘s hunt for his first Dakar Rally win will have to continue for another year. Despite chasing down and eventually closing in on leader Carlos Sainz, disaster struck on the penultimate day when his Prodrive Hunter broke its right-front triangle and suffered five punctured tyres, dropping him to a paltry thirty-sixth in Ultimate and over an hour back of Sainz in the overall.

The A-arm failure occurred 132 kilometres into Stage #11, leaving him stranded for an hour until fellow Prodrive ally Zi Yungang stopped to provide assistance. Loeb suffered more issues such as flat tyres—which pervaded much of the field as the stage took place on rocky terrain—and finished a dismal 1:28:15 behind winner Guerlain Chicherit. To add insult to injury, Loeb also received a one-minute penalty for not having his seatbelts properly fastened shortly after rejoining the race.

Loeb now sits third overall, trailing Sainz by 1:36:02 after being overtaken by Guillaume de Mévius. De Mévius finished the stage runner-up to his team-mate Chicherit, and has a ten-minute gap on Loeb. Of course, he is also too far back to catch Sainz, who simply needs to complete the final stage on Friday to secure his fifth Dakar Rally.

“Still 170 kilometres to go. I know very well that in this rally especially, you need to cross the finish and this is what we are going to try,” said Sainz. “Concentrating tomorrow and have a good look in the car because the stage was super, super rough, and see if we can finish tomorrow.”

While the four-wheel overall is all but wrapped up, the battle has only tightened up in the two-wheel realm as Ross Branch dominated the day to score his second stage win. Rival Ricky Brabec placed second but just thirty-two seconds behind Branch, minimising the stage’s impact on the overall to barely half a minute.

Mason Klein‘s maiden Dakar Rally with Kove Moto might not have gone the way he hoped, but is a story that will last a lifetime.

Whether Klein would even race the Dakar in 2024 was an uncertainty for much of the fall. Despite being the 2022 World Rally-Raid Champion in Rally2 and showcasing himself at the 2023 Dakar Rally, he was dropped by KTM midseason for a lack of funding and struggled to find a new home. Kove, a Chinese manufacturer who was running their maiden rally raid season, signed him for the 2024 race with an arrangement that granted him factory-level access to their resources and crews despite not formally being a factory rider. As such, he was technically still a privateer competing under his Klein Off-Road Racing Team banner and rode a green EffectiveSoft-sponsored bike in contrast to his new colleagues.

Said bike, the new Kove 450 Rally EX, almost didn’t make it to Al-‘Ula in time for the race as it was ensnared by customs in the neighbouring United Arab Emirates. The Kove team launched quite literally a midnight ride across Saudi Arabia to pick up the bike and bring it back to the bivouac, getting it set up with just thirty minutes before final technical inspection concluded.

“It has been quite a ride,” began a post from Klein. “From the planning stage until today I have given it my all. I wasn’t sure if I would make it this year, but with the help of my family, friends and sponsors that believed in me, I was able to get to the start line. Kove stood up and gave me a Gen 2 bike. I knew what I was signing up for, a virtually untested, fresh off the production line bike. I was excited to be a part of the R&D process. The moment I got my hands on the bike, my team and I did our best to prepare it. I have faith in the bike’s future, the company, and their plans for its future in Rally.”

Despite the chaotic start and his entry being the first time Kove even raced in the top-level RallyGP class, Klein quickly stood out when he finished tenth in the Prologue. From there, he turned even more heads with a tenth in Stage #1, just twenty-five seconds behind current Dakar leader Ricky Brabec.

Before Pierre-Louis Loubet returns to World Rally Championship-2 for the 2024 season, he got to try his hand at a slightly different form of rally when he made his rally raid début in the Africa Eco Race. Despite his inexperience in the discipline and finishing at the bottom of his category, the result does not properly reflect how quickly attuned he became to his new environment.

Loubet raced the Apache APH-01, a new hybrid side-by-side vehicle that runs on both internal combustion and electric engines, in the T3 class with François Borsotto as co-driver; Borsotto won the Africa Eco Race in 2019. After finishing eighth overall on the first day, he was already a stage winner in Stage #2 when he beat his Apache team-mate Gautier Paulin by two and a half minutes.

However, his hopes of contending for the overall quickly dissipated in Stage #3 when he was hit by a series of “small issues” that forced him to return to the bivouac. He had been third overall prior to the exit before it dropped him to thirteenth. Although no longer able to vie for the AER, he continued to win as he claimed Stages #4, #6, #7, and #9. His five stage wins led all competitors.

“When everything goes well, rally raid is really amazing, and I’m having so much fun,” Loubet remarked after his Stage #7 victory.

Due to his early retirement, Loubet was unable to advance any higher than ninth in the general ranking. A fifth in Stage #10 caused him to sink out of the top ten again to eleventh, where he remained for the final two days. He also finished fourth and last among T3 entries while Paulin, a fellow rally raid newcomer who arrived from the FIM Motocross World Championship, won the overall.

In one of the more bizarre reasons to be disciplined by the FIA, 2024 Dakar Rally competitor Marco Piana has received a fine of €500 for having the French flag affixed to his truck as national flags are banned for the race. The fine can be suspended until the end of the rally as long as he does not commit the infraction again.

According to Piana, at the start of Stage #9 on Tuesday, an FIA scrutineer noticed his name was missing from the door of his #645 GINAF truck. Asked to rectify this, Piana complied and grabbed a sticker from inside the truck before applying it as requested. However, the decal included both his name as well as the French flag signifying his nationality, which he and his Xtremeplus team did not notice until later that night when they returned to the bivouac. The flag was already removed by the time the FIA summoned him for a hearing.

National flags are the norm and enshrined in Article 21.1 of the FIA Cross-Country Rally Sporting Regulations: “The first initial(s) and surname of the driver and the co-driver, followed by the national flags of the country according to Art. 9.4 of the (International Sporting) Code, must appear on both sides of the front wings or front doors of the vehicle.” However, the Dakar Rally’s organising body Amaury Sport Organisation introduced Article 6.3 (FIA) and Article 6.1.1.3 (FIM) to their race rulebook for 2024, both of which state flags are no longer allowed by the competitor’s name. Although the FIA and FIM hold the final say over their rules, both can grant waivers in “very exceptional cases.”

An official explanation for the ban was never given, though many surmise it is out of safety concerns pertaining to the ongoing war in Gaza. While Palestine and Israel are too far away from Dakar host country Saudi Arabia for the fighting to spill over, the ASO expressed worry that such a contentious conflict in the region could inspire attacks against racers sympathetic to certain sides, and managing race security is already difficult enough in an open desert. Since the Dakar’s move to Saudi Arabia in 2020, driver safety has mostly been intact save for a string of explosions before the 2022 race that claimed Camelia Liparoti’s support truck and severely injured driver Philippe Boutron; the latter led to a terrorism probe by French authorities and prompted the ASO to move personnel from hotels to camps.

The Gaza war led to the 2023 Jordan Baja being called off, while the Houthis’ involvement by attacking international shipping has impacted competitors heading to the Dakar or other rally raids in the region.

Significant others racing together is far from a new concept. However, Ricky Brabec and Sara Price may have just unlocked the ultimate motorsport couple goal.

On Wednesday, Brabec scored his first stage win of the 2024 Dakar Rally in the RallyGP class while his girlfriend Price notched her first ever competing in SSV. Brabec had already been leading the bike overall since the Chrono Stage whereas Price continues her pursuit of the top spot in her class.

Entering Stage #10, Brabec was looking to build as much distance between him and rival Ross Branch, which had grown from less than a minute after Stage #8 to over seven the next day. Branch, along with the spoiler hopeful Martin Michek, crashed the party through the first third of the stage before Brabec found himself back in control. A navigation error ultimately dropped Branch to sixth. With Branch out of the picture for the day, Brabec led Monster Energy Honda Rally Team‘s second consecutive podium sweep as José Ignacio Cornejo and Tuesday winner Adrien Van Beveren followed; Brabec and Cornejo were separated by just two seconds, the former aided by 2:25 in time credits after catching Van Beveren early on, while he had twenty seconds on Van Beveren.

In the overall, he leads Brabec by 10:54 with two days to go.

“The day was good although the navigation wasn’t easy. In the first fifty kilometres, I was riding into the sun so that was difficult and then once I’d caught Adrien we rode together the whole way,” said Brabec. “We made some little mistakes here and there, but we came out in a good position for tomorrow and the last day. With two days left we have a little bit of a lead so let’s see what happens tomorrow.”

BMW M Team WRT have confirmed which six drivers will take the wheel of their two Hypercars in the 2024 FIA WEC as they make their return to the top flight of prototype sportscar racing. The line-up features multiple DTM champions and seasoned WEC veterans, with several of them making their Hypercar debut with the Bavarian marque.

Sheldon van der Linde and Marco Wittmann, both of whom have experience racing the BMW M Hybrid V8, are split between the two cars. In car #15, Wittmann will be joined by Dries Vanthoor and newcomer to BMW Raffaele Marciello, while van der Linde will share car #20 with WEC veteran Robin Frijns and three-time DTM champion René Rast.

The BMW M Hybrid V8 has already seen action in the 2023 IMSA Sportscar Championship, taking victory at the 2023 Sahlen’s Six Hours of The Glen. With other teams like Ferrari already having experienced a season in the Hypercar class, BMW have a challenge to catch up to them. However, with their driver line-up and experience in IMSA, they are ready and raring to go.

#15

Germany’s Marco Wittmann is no stranger to the BMW Hypercar, having competed in it in the 2023 IMSA Sportscar Championship in America. Having won the DTM drivers’ championship twice for BMW, he is eager to to the same in the top class of sportscar racing. “I am extremely excited about the Hypercar class in the FIA WEC,” the 34 year old explained. “There is a lot of genuine hype around this class in 2024, with so many manufacturers and top-class drivers. It is fantastic to be a part of it.”

Having been with Team WRT for many years, Belgium’s Dries Vanthoor had already been confirmed as one of the Hypercar drivers. The 25 year old competed in the 2022 WEC season in the now defunct LMP2 class. Vanthoor will be racing against his older brother, Laurens Vanthoor, who has retained his seat at Porsche Penske Motorsport and already has a Hypercar series under his belt.

Gautier Paulin is relatively new to rally raid, but he is already a winner. Although not as flashy as his team-mate and World Rally Championship driver Pierre-Louis Loubet, he was the overall leader among four-wheelers for all but the opening stage en route to winning the 2024 Africa Eco Race.

Paulin, a five-time Motocross des Nations champion and FIM Motocross World Championship alumnus, was running his maiden rally raid in the AER, which follows the original Dakar Rally route from Europe to Dakar, Senegal. He and Loubet were racing the Apache APH-01, a hybrid SSV that uses both electric and internal combusion engines, in just its second race. Although the 6,000-kilometre Africa Eco Race was much longer than the Baja Portalegre 500 where the Apache made its début, Paulin and Loubet put on a clinic as they combined to win seven stages.

Although Loubet had five victories, a series of mechanical issues in Stage #3 knocked him to the bottom of the T3 category where he eventually finished eleventh overall and last in his class. Loubet is also a newcomer to the discipline.

With Loubet out of the picture, Paulin finished fifth in the opening stage before passing Carlos Vento for the lead the following day and never looking back. His co-driver Rémi Boulanger originally had plans of racing the 2024 Dakar Rally before joining Apache for the “real” Dakar; brother Édouard Boulanger is currently competing in the Dakar in Saudi Arabia as the navigator for Stéphane Peterhansel.

“Rémi, you’re an experienced guy, but Gautier, honestly, I didn’t think you were going to do so well,” Peterhansel remarked. “You had a perfect race, became a true rally raid driver, and I hope in any case that you both had a lot of fun. Congratulations again to you both on a great result. I’m really proud. That’s cool.”

Monster Energy Honda Rally Team has been putting on a clinic at the 2024 Dakar Rally, and they upped their ante on Tuesday as they swept the RallyGP Stage #9 podium with Adrien Van Beveren leading Ricky Brabec and Pablo Quintanilla. Brabec’s runner-up finish to Ross Branch‘s fifth allows him to build some more distance between the two, ballooning it from just forty-two seconds after Stage #8 to over seven minutes.

The Honda trio dominated the stage as Van Beveren and Brabec led all ten waypoints with Quintanilla in tow. Van Beveren, aided by five and a half minutes in time bonuses after quickly catching Monday’s winner Kevin Benavides and runner-up Luciano Benavides, also moved past his team-mate José Ignacio Cornejo for third overall, four minutes behind Branch. Cornejo finished seventh, stymied by an error before the refuel point.

“Today was possibly one of my only shots to make a big push and try to make a bit bigger gap than forty or fifty seconds so I gave it my all today,” Brabec commented. “I think tomorrow we’re probably going to have to open but if I can clean up I think we’ll be set free. In the 2020 Dakar, I pulled a gap early on and this has definitely been the most stressful race of my life because it’s so close. Anyway, with a few more days to go, let’s keep the hopes up and keep charging.”

Strategy also played a critical role on the FIA side as Team Audi Sport hoped to put as much distance between their last remaining contender Carlos Sainz and his rival Sébastien Loeb, who has been on a tear in recent days. While Loeb went on to claim his fourth stage win, Sainz had his team-mate Stéphane Peterhansel—who was no longer in position to vie for the overall win—drive alongside him as insurance should the race go awry. Their other colleague Mattias Ekström started the stage as Monday’s winner, and he was entrusted with navigating the route ahead of them in a pseudo-recce role.

This approach paid off as Sainz finished second behind Loeb by four minutes. Although this narrows the gap, he still has a twenty-minute advantage on Loeb with three days remaining.

Carles Falcón Brunet died from his injuries Monday, a week after crashing during Stage #2 of the Dakar Rally. He was 45 years old.

Falcón, racing in the Rally2 category and Original by Motul subclass as a Malle Moto solo rider, crashed 448 kilometres into the second stage. He had been running fiftieth overall in Rally2 (fourteenth in Malle Moto) after finishing seventy-second in class in the Prologue and forty-ninth the following day.

Fellow riders stopped to administer aid until medical help arrived, and he was discovered to not have a pulse from cardiac arrest. He was subsequently resuscitated and airlifted to hospital in Dawadmi, where he was placed in a medically induced coma and diagnosed with a fracture in his C2 vertebra (a hangman’s fracture) and edema in his head. After being transferred to another hospital in Riyadh, he was flown home to Spain on Friday.

“Carles was a smiling person, always active, who passionately enjoyed everything he did, especially motorcycles,” reads a statement from his TwinTrail Racing Team. “He left us doing something that was his dream, participating in the Dakar. He was enjoying it, he was happy on the bike. We must remember him for his smile and the happiness he generated in everyone.”

TwinTrail, who also fielded a bike for his friend Isaac Feliu, withdrew from the rally shortly after his accident. Feliu had undergone a similar series of events during their Dakar début in 2022, when he crashed and suffered a concussion and C7 fracture that left him in a coma for two weeks. After recovering, he and Falcón decided to pursue the 2024 Dakar. Had tragedy not struck, Falcón would be looking to improve upon his sixty-eighth overall and sixteenth in Malle Moto from 2022.

Kevin and Luciano Benavides had anything but a case of the Mondays as they finished first and second in Stage #8, separated by just thirty-one seconds. However, they still have a ways to go in the Dakar Rally overall as neither gained any positions and remain fifth and eighth, respectively.

Hondas dominated the first half of the stage as overall leader Ricky Brabec and Adrien Van Beveren paced the RallyGP bikes through the first three checkpoints until they reached the transfer section at KM 165; spanning roughly thirty-nine percent of the route, the transfer was a 179-km long strip of highway that split the Selective Section in half and turned it into 279 kilometres of racing. Brabec and Van Beveren continued to lead as the race resumed, but the Benavides brothers roared to life in the final ten kilometres to leapfrog them; Luciano, aided by 1:39 in time bonuses after catching the first starter José Ignacio Cornejo, edged out Van Beveren by fifty-four seconds.

Brabec ended up finishing seventh but it was intentional on his part as he focused on the general ranking battle with Ross Branch. The two entered the stage with a one-second gap between them, and they were first and second upon hitting the final waypoint at KM 448 before they dropped back. By the end, Brabec was one spot and twenty-one seconds ahead of Branch, increasing their overall margin to forty-two seconds.

“I didn’t want to start too far away from Ross tomorrow so I had to play a little bit of cat and mouse with him,” Brabec explained. “I caught him early on so stuck with him all day, then at the refuelling point, I saw some times and I was winning. I let Ross take over and open the way to the finish line as we had to play smart today and I didn’t want him starting behind me tomorrow. It was still a good day to finish seventh and I’ll continue to have fun out there.”

The Audis also developed some breathing space with their own 1–2 finish after a dismal Stage #7. After retiring on Sunday with a mechanical failure, Mattias Ekström won on Monday with Stéphane Peterhansel in tow. Carlos Sainz finished fourth and six positions ahead of yesterday’s FIA winner Sébastien Loeb, who missed a waypoint and had to turn around to find it which costed him six minutes. As a result, Sainz now leads Loeb by 24:47.

Who doesn’t love rally raid trucks? Although they no longer have a World Rally-Raid Championship trophy to race for, those giant monsters that race the Dakar Rally are a beloved category among fans. This perception was further solidified when the MAN TGA 26.480 6×6 of Jordi Juvanteny and KH-7 Ecovergy Team won the first of two Fan Boost votes, which earned them five bonus points towards the Mission 1000 ranking.

Mission 1000 is a separate category from the main Dakar Rally that follows its route but takes place on a separate course, reserved for ten vehicles powered by electric, hydrogen, or hybrid energy. Besides finishing stages, teams can notch five more points if they win the Fan Boost, a fan vote that takes place on the Dakar Rally’s official Instagram profile.

KH-7’s MAN, which runs on a mix of hydrogen and hydrotreated vegetable oil, dominated the first poll that took place after the race’s halfway point on Friday. They recorded over 2,600 votes, more than twice that of runner-up Tacita Formula Corsa‘s electric Tacita Discanto motorcycle. All five other teams failed to break quadruple digits.

The truck, the only such vehicle in Mission 1000, has also been impressive on track as well. Prior to the vote, it was already leading the overall with 60 points, earning ten points for finishing each of the first six stages. They added another ten points in Stage #3 when they set a time faster than the benchmark time; if a team beats the reference, their time is classified as Sport Mode for ten points, while being within range is Normal Mode for five points and slower is Eco Mode with zero bonuses.

Les Tigres du Désert‘s hydrogen Can-Am Maverick is second overall with 58 points. The Maverick and KH-7’s MAN were the only vehicles to complete the full distance in Stage #6, though the electric bike of Green Power Race salvaged ten points by winning the launch control contest that day, which consists of a 100-metre drag race.

Team Audi Sport was fairly consistent throughout the first half of the Dakar Rally as Carlos Sainz and Mattias Ekström survived the two-day Chrono Stage to comfortably sit 1–2 in the overall ranking. After a rest day on Saturday, however, Sébastien Loeb is priming his foot to kick the door down following a masterful Stage #7.

After winning the Chrono Stage, Loeb overtook Lucas Moraes at KM 311 and stormed off to his third win. Sainz finished fourth, just missing the class podium by forty-four seconds off Loeb’s Prodrive ally Nasser Al-Attiyah. While Sainz’s run is certainly not an effort to scoff at, Loeb’s win whittled the margin between him and Sainz from thirty minutes to just nineteen.

“That was a really good day today that came out well for us,” said Loeb. “It was not easy though as it was difficult with the navigation and a bit complicated with a bit of everything; some canyons, some dunes, tracks and so on but we stayed concentrated on the roadbook. We did make a couple of mistakes here and there with direction but overall we were able to correct all those mistakes very quickly to enable us to push.”

Sainz became Audi’s last hope at securing the Dakar win after Ekström suffered a mechanical issue fifty-one kilometres into the stage. Fellow Audi driver Stéphane Peterhansel, who was already out of contention with a Chrono Stage retirement, stopped to provide assistance but it was not enough to salvage his day. Consequently, Ekström falls from second overall to twentieth.

“After thirty kilometres, Emil (Bergkvist) and I felt that something was loose. We heard this ‘klak klak klak klak’, but very little,” Ekström explained. “Later, we got a slow puncture and the upright was grinding on the rim. Shit happens, life goes on.”

After making her name in side-by-side vehicles, Dania Akeel will move up to the top class of rally raid when she starts competing in a Toyota Hilux Overdrive in the Ultimate (T1) category in 2025, competing in both the Saudi Toyota Championship and World Rally-Raid Championship. Her entry will be prepared by Overdrive Racing.

Akeel got to drive an Hilux Overdrive in October at the W2RC Next Gen Tryouts, which allowed racers from other categories to pilot T1 cars on a test course following the W2RC season-ending Rallye du Maroc. Said Hilux is normally driven by Yazeed Al-Rajhi, a fellow Saudi competitor.

“We decided with the support of Abdul Latif Jameel Toyota, and with the support of all the sponsors, their support and encouragement, that I will participate in the T1+ category with the Overdrive team,” Akeel told SSC Saudi Sports Company at the Dakar Rally. “Our champion Yazeed Al-Rajhi is racing with them, and they assured me that they have a place and a car, and the sponsor supports this decision.”

She normally races in the Challenger (formerly T3) class, finishing eighth in class in her Dakar début in 2022; she was one of the first Saudi women to enter the race, which moved to her home country in 2020. Akeel signed with Wevers Sport to race a Taurus T3 Max starting with the 2023 Rallye du Maroc, where she finished sixth among T3 entrants.

Her 2024 Dakar Rally was upended by a clutch failure ninety-one kilometres before the end of the Chrono Stage on Friday. She had been twelfth overall among Challenger entrants with a best finish of seventh in Stage #3.