Motorsports Racing News & Blog Articles

Everyone feared weather would impact the Rallye du Maroc, and it certainly did not take long to do so.

Severe flooding following Sunday’s Prologue caused a deadlock on the liaison stage for competitors as they tried to travel from Ouarzazate to the next bivouac in Zagora. Local police stopped the caravan from proceeding until the river died down, but this left everyone stuck in the meantime.

With so many people arriving late, race organisers opted to swap the routes for Stages #1 and #2. The “new” Stage #1 on Monday, a loop starting and ending in Zagora, has also been shortened from the original 317 kilometres in Selective Sections to just 180 km for FIM riders and 178 km for FIA drivers.

Morocco was hit by torrential downpours and flooding at historic levels in September, killing over twenty people in the country and neighbouring Algeria. Rally organiser ODC Event anticipated inclement weather to potentially interfere with the race, sending crews to the route to analyse the damage to the environment. The Baja Morocco, an unrelated cross-country rally held the week before the Rallye du Maroc, also had to adjust its route accordingly.

Driver Isidre Esteve noted days before the race that “the chotts have flooded, and lakes have formed in front of the dunes of Merzouga, something I’ve never seen before. All the main tracks, which used to be visible, have disappeared.”

The highly anticipated Dacia Sandrider made its competition début in Sunday’s Prologue of the Rallye du Maroc. It was probably not ideal then that Sébastien Loeb ended up in a ditch with his.

A roadbook miscommunication between Loeb and co-driver Fabian Lurquin got them trapped in a trench with a broken right front suspension arm. Fortunately for them, Marcos Baumgart, who is racing a Prodrive Hunter (the predecessor to the Sandrider), wound up in the ditch himself moments later and decided to help once he was able to get out.

Once Loeb and Lurquin made the necessary repairs, they brought the car to the finish in fortieth of forty-one in the Ultimate class. While they finished 22:45 back of leader Guerlain Chicherit, Prologue times do not count towards the overall for FIA classes. As such, they will have a brand new slate on the leaderboard for Stage #1, though they will still be starting further back due to their position.

“We should have stayed more to the right of the track, but Fabian didn’t have time to give me the information,” Loeb explained. “There were a lot of notes immediately after one another in such a short time. We came to the ditch, deep but not wide, I saw it and slowed down but we still fell in.”

Dacia team-mate and current World Rally-Raid Championship leader Nasser Al-Attiyah finished thirteenth after taking a more conservative approach, not wanting to be the first car on the road. Their other colleague Cristina Gutiérrez, being an Ultimate newcomer, pushed and was fourth.

Dakar Team Spierings has formed a partnership with Rebellion Racing for the 2025 Dakar Rally, both parties announced Sunday. Their collaboration, called Rebellion Spierings, will entail fielding Rebellion’s Toyota Hilux as well as two cars in the Challenger category from Spierings.

Spierings previously teamed up with Roger Grouwels to create Dakar Team Spierings RaceArt for the 2024 Dakar, where the former finished tenth in Challenger and the latter bowed out after halfway. Grouwels has since moved on to focus on the Ultimate category alongside Janus van Kasteren in 2026.

January’s Dakar was Spierings’ sixth overall, third on four wheels, and first in Challenger. He raced on a bike from 2019 to 2021 before switching to an SSV out of safety concern. Rebellion Timepieces, the parent company of Rebellion Racing and the official watchmaker of the Dakar Rally, has long sponsored his cars.

“We proudly picked up our new buggies last week, and they are now being made completely in our new style at Vughts Reclame,” reads a statement from Spierings.

Rebellion Racing is primarily known for their successes in the FIA World Endurance Championship, winning six championships across LMP1 and LMP2 during the 2010s as well as the LMp1-L class at the 2014 24 Hours of Le Mans. Despite plans of becoming Peugeot’s Hypercar factory team, the programme was shut down after the 2020 Le Mans 24.

Eryk Goczał and Martin Koloc will be without their co-drivers for the Rallye du Maroc due to last-minute emergencies. Goczał’s usual navigator Oriol Mena is staying home in Spain to attend to a family matter, while Koloc’s partner David Schovánek opted to sit out the race citing what Koloc said was “acute health complications.”

Álex Haro has been entrusted with calling the shots for Goczał in the #307 Taurus T3 Max, while Mirko Brun will make his debut in a T1+ car as the navigator for Koloc’s Red-Lined REVO+ GT-R.

Haro has worked as a navigator for over a decade, with the 2024 Dakar Rally marking his tenth start in the event when he was the co-driver for Nani Roma. The Spaniard has two Dakar stage wins to his name, both with Giniel de Villiers. In April, he linked up with X-raid Team to work with Dakar winner Carlos Sainz at the BP Ultimate Rally-Raid, finishing fourth.

“I want to really greet Oriol’s father, because unfortunately in Rallye du Maroc Oriol will not be driving with me, he cannot,” Goczał told Cross-Country Rally News. “Although I will be joined in the team by Álex Haro, a T1 co-driver, which I think also gives me a great opportunity to get a step further into the T1 world, to learn more.

“I truly cannot say how happy I am to be back racing after the Dakar. I think we are much more prepared than the Dakar and we’ll give it all we’ve got.”

After being the final rider to complete the Dakar Rally on a Kawasaki motorcycle, Patricio Cabrera has rejoined the marque with factory backing for November’s Baja 1000 and the 2025 SCORE International season.

Cabrera is the current SCORE Pro Moto Ironman points leader, holding a five-point edge over Brian Roberts entering the fourth and final race of the season. Although 2024 is his first year in the series and riding on his own, he and his KTM have proven stout with three consecutive runner-up finishes at the San Felipe 250, Baja 500, and Baja 400.

Prior to desert racing, he was a motocross champion in his native Chile. In 2013, he made his Dakar début on a Kawasaki KLX450R with backing from Kawasaki Chile CIDEF and finished eighty-fourth overall. He switched to a Kawasaki KX450F in 2017, where his thirty-third was his best career finish during the Dakar’s South American run.

When the Dakar moved to Saudi Arabia in 2020, Cabrera improved to twenty-eighth overall. After Kawasaki eased back its rally programme, he continued to race the event on a KTM 450 Rally in 2020. His tenth and most recent Dakar was a twentieth in Rally2 in 2023; at 32 years of age, he is the youngest person to hit the ten-start benchmark, which classifies him as a “Dakar Legend”.

Beto Verber will oversee Cabrera’s #745X team as lead mechanic and manager. Verber has over three decades of SCORE and desert experience, including a seven-year stretch riding for Kawasaki Team Green from 1990 to 1996. Other team members include Carlos Valenzuela,
Mauricio Hernadez, and Cabrera’s father Patricio Cabrera Sr.

Should discussions be fruitful, the World Rally-Raid Championship will have a title for the best bike team in 2025. The FIM Jury delivered a notice to all team managers inviting them to discuss the proposal on Tuesday morning in the Rallye du Maroc bivouac.

The FIM currently awards W2RC trophies to the champion rider and manufacturer. Only the premier RallyGP class has the latter, while the top rider wins a title in all four categories (RallyGP, Rally2, Rally3, and Quad).

At first glance, the manufacturers’ title might make it redundant to have a team championship, at least in RallyGP. After all, the class is reserved for factory-level riders, meaning their teams are usually the marques themselves. For example, the 2024 manufacturers’ championship is a duel between Honda and Hero, whose RallyGP entries exclusively and respectively race for Monster Energy Honda Rally Team and Hero MotoSports.

However, the 2024 points battle only featuring two teams (compared to five in 2023) means the FIM is likely hoping to add a team-based title to include privateers and others. Such a decision would also be more practical for Rally2, where there are a plethora of outfits and riders are more likely to switch bikes while staying under their own banner.

A team trophy does not exist on the FIA side of the W2RC, though the FIA Baja Cups have them. The European and Middle East Baja Cups also had category-specific team championships for SSVs before being expanded to all divisions in 2024. On the other hand, there is no such award in the FIM Bajas World Cup.

G Rally Team has unveiled G-ECKO, a new line of Challenger cars that will make its competition début at the 2025 Dakar Rally. The first model will be dubbed the G-ECKO CHALLENGER ONE.

G-ECKO is the successor to the OT3, a Challenger vehicle developed by Overdrive Racing that G Rally Team has been overseeing since 2021. As part of the arrangement, the team took over the rights and responsibilities for the OT3 from the Red Bull Off-Road Junior Team, such as being the party whom customers would approach if they wish to race it themselves.

“We took the time to think about and analyse everything we wanted to revise and correct on the OT3,” said G Rally managing director Louis de Laminne. “Feedback from our customers was very important in this process. It’s their experience that drives us forward. We’ve now put all this into practice with the development of a new vehicle, which will also enter the Challenger category.”

The name is a play on “gecko”, a lizard that Grégoire de Mévius used to have a decal of on his rally cars. The “G”—like in G Rally Team—is emphasised as a nod to the family’s first names, with Grégoire’s sons and team owners Ghislain and Guillaume de Mévius being a case in point, while “-ECKO” is a pun for “& Co.”

“We’re a team where everyone has their place,” Guillaume explained. “We live things together. At the races, our mechanics work alongside our customers, and everyone plays an important role. We take things seriously, with professionalism, but we make sure we do it in a friendly, family way.”

The Amaury Sport Organisation has introduced new regulations concerning spare tyres and motorcycle repair for riders competing in the Original by Motul subcategory, which will go into effect at the 2025 Dakar Rally.

Original by Motul, also known as Malle Moto, is a subclass of Rally2 in which riders are forbidden from receiving outside help from crews. The ASO and title sponsor Motul provide some resources to help out, which starting in 2025 will include a full set of front and rear wheels (including the rims, tyres, and bib mousse) and four extra pairs of tyres. The wheels and tyres will be marked at the start of the race; any rider caught with an unmarked or complete spare will receive a ten-minute penalty per violation.

When swapping the tyre, Malle Moto riders are required to use the portable tyre changer from Rabaconda, which will be available in a designated zone in the bivouac colloquially named the “Original by Motul Area”. This is also the only place where repairs can be made, meaning they must walk to and from service stations outside the area without their bike if they wish to do a task like welding, acquiring spare parts, or having oil samples analysed. The bike may leave the zone to be washed, refuelled, or tested.

Only the spy fork seals, shock absorbers, and steering bearings can be changed with external assistance. Even then, it can can only be done with the approval and oversight of the Original by Motul Area Manager.

An engine change automatically disqualifies the rider from the Original by Motul results, but they can still continue in Rally2.

In conjunction with the World Rally-Raid Championship, the FIA revealed Friday the 2025 calendars for its three Baja series.

All eight FIA World Baja Cup rounds are combination races with the European or Middle East Cups. While the season length is the same as it was in 2024, the biggest changes are the Italian Baja replacing the Baja Poland and the Jordan Baja moving from the season finale to the second race.

The Jordan Baja was moved to April in order to provide balance for the FIA Middle East Baja Cup. The series’ four races are now evenly split between the spring and autumn, with the former consisting of the Saudi Baja and Jordan while the Qatar International Baja and Dubai International Baja are in the latter. All four races are also on the World Cup.

On the opposite extreme, the FIA European Baja Cup calendar nearly doubles in size from five to nine. Unlike its Middle Eastern counterpart, the European Cup has five standalone races independent of the World Cup. Among such events are the Baja Poland, which is demoted from its World Cup status, and Baja Troia Türkiye, which has been relocated from November to May.

Baja Greece, originally a World Cup exclusive in 2024, is now a joint race between it and the European Cup. A competitors survey conducted by the race organisers found that a plurality preferred for it to be on both series’ slates.

Jaromír Romančík will work together with Dušan Drdaj yet again at the 2025 Dakar Rally. Kind of.

On Friday, Cajdašrot Dakar Team announced they have added Romančík to their roster for their Dakar début next January. While this technically makes him a team-mate to Drdaj like they were at the 2024 race, Romančík intends to compete in the Original by Motul category for solo riders without assistance from teams.

The two were previously part of Orion – Moto Racing Group, doing the 2023 Rallye du Maroc together to qualify for Dakar. For his first start in the World Rally-Raid Championship, Romančík impressed at Morocco with a seventh in the Rally2 class and second among Road to Dakar riders, which a win would have earned him free Dakar Rally registration.

His maiden Dakar started as sluggish as his body due to a stomach bug that hampered his performance. Mechanical issues also plagued his bike including a broken fuel system and radiator, leaving him at the bottom of the rankings throughout the first half of the race despite otherwise running in the top twenty in class. Romančík retired for good after volunteering to give his bike’s rear wheel to his other team-mate Milan Engel—who was competing for a top ten (and succeeded, validating Romančík’s sacrifice)—in Stage #7.

After his exit, Romančík expressed interest in switching to Original by Motul for 2025, which he called the “real Dakar” and “probably the cheapest option for me.”

With Gerrit Zuurmond opting to stay home to be with his wife Erica, Rainbow Truck Team has enlisted Tjeerd van Ballegooij as his replacement for the Rallye du Maroc.

Erica Zuurmond had initially been tasked as team manager for Morocco in Simon Koetsier‘s place, but reported experiencing pain in recent weeks that has prevented her from leaving the Netherlands. Her husband was originally set to drive the team’s MAN TGA with van Ballegooij as his navigator.

The race will be van Ballegooij’s first time driving in a World Rally-Raid Championship event after exclusively serving as a co-driver to Zuurmond. He called the shots for Zuurmond at the Dakar Rally in January, finishing fifteenth in the Truck class.

“It’s super exciting to be able to do this, but it’s bittersweet because Gerrit can’t be here to pursue his passion,” said van Ballegooij. “On the other hand, we are extremely proud that he has given us this opportunity, and we are very grateful for that.”

Klaas Kwakkel will shift over from the mechanic’s seat to the navigator’s side, while Dick Zuurmond fills the mechanic role. Dick is Gerrit’s brother who usually drives Rainbow’s assistance trucks, but made his début as a driver at the 2024 Dakar in the Mission 1000 class; his hydrogen-powered Volkswagen Amarok finished seventh.

South Africa’s bid for a World Rally-Raid Championship date has succeeded as it will host the third round of the 2025 calendar.

The South African Safari Rally, not to be confused with the World Rally Championship event in Kenya, is scheduled for 18–24 May. It marks the halfway point of the season, with multiple-month breaks sandwiching it and the rest of the slate.

Home to one of the more prominent national cross-country rally series, South Africa “auditioned” for a W2RC round with the TGRSA Safari 1000 in June. Held in Limpopo as the only event on the South African Rally-Raid Championship longer than two days, the race was the spiritual successor to the TGR 1000 Desert Race in nearby Botswana. Limpopo and the nearby North West province will also host the Safari Rally, with headquarters at Sun City Resort by the Pilanesberg National Park.

In a sense, the Safari Rally splits the five-race 2025 schedule in half. The first two rounds are in the Middle East, the Dakar Rally in Saudi Arabia and the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge, and scheduled just a month apart in January and February. A two-month pause follows before heading to South Africa.

Once the Safari Rally is out of the way, the championship goes dormant for another four months before resuming in September with the BP Ultimate Rally-Raid in Portugal. Two weeks after that, everyone crosses the Strait of Gibraltar into Morocco for the season-ending Rallye du Maroc.

Aleš Loprais‘ return to Team de Rooy will have to wait until the 2025 Dakar Rally. On Friday, the team announced they have withdrawn from the Rallye du Maroc after experiencing problems with the secondary cooling system in the driveline.

The issue, which the team said “occurred during testing in heavy off-road conditions,” could not be solved on-site in Morocco, meaning they have to bring his IVECO PowerStar back to the Netherlands to do so. With only two days until the race begins, there is not enough time for them to complete the repairs and make it back.

Loprais and fellow de Rooy newcomer Vaidotas Žala had been spending the week in Merzouga to test their trucks. Žala is not entered for the Rallye du Maroc whereas Loprais was, the latter being the team’s lone representative among the seven in the Truck class. Even with Žala not doing the rally, Morocco is often used for desert testing due to its similar profile to the Dakar in Saudi Arabia.

Both drivers joined de Rooy in September. Loprais made the switch after spending the last five years with Praga, finishing second in Truck at the latest Dakar in January. He previously raced with de Rooy in 2016, but did not finish.

Žala, usually piloting a car, will be making his Truck début at the 2025 Dakar. He has been racing at Dakar since 2016, with his latest start coming in a Mini.

Hyundai Motorsport Customer Racing completed a successful week of development testing for the i20 N Rally2 in northern Italy, concluding with a competitive entry in Rally Valli della Carnia. Andreas Mikkelsen and co-driver Torstein Eriksen, after a strong showing, finished just five seconds behind the rally’s winners, despite losing 15 seconds due to a puncture.

The testing began earlier in the week with French Tarmac Rally Championship driver Eric Camilli at the wheel. Focused on optimising differential options, a short ratio gearbox, and updated suspension geometry, Hyundai Motorsport engineers used the challenging mountain roads to validate potential improvements to the car’s already impressive performance.

Mikkelsen, who completed additional testing before the rally, praised the i20 N Rally2’s handling and grip in the twisty conditions. “I felt very comfortable with the car,” Mikkelsen commented. “Without the puncture, the win was definitely possible.”

Hyundai Motorsport Rally2 Project Manager, Andrea Cisotti, hailed the progress made, noting the positive feedback from both drivers. He said, “We have established an excellent baseline with the suspension work and have made strides in the car’s acceleration and handling.”

The week’s efforts serve as preparation for future development tests, with Hyundai Motorsport engineers aiming to introduce the upgrades ahead of the 2025 season.

In 2025, the 1000 Miglia will throw back to the days before the Second World War by racing on a figure 8-style course inspired by the routes used in its early history.

Since its revival in 1977, the race primarily ran a single loop, though the orientation varied each year. For example, the 2023 edition ran clockwise before going counter-clockwise in 2024.

The 2025 race will start in Brescia, from which the route goes clockwise through San Lazzaro di Savena. After that, the route breaks through the Apennines mountains and crosses the Raticosa and Futa passes into Prato. From Prato, the race travels southwards before arriving in Rome to mark the end of the second leg.

The third leg brings the event back north on the way to Cervia and Milano Marittima in Emilia-Romagna. Leg #4 turns competitors southwest where they will cross Prato once again-thereby completing the figure 8’s “overpass” en route to Empoli; a run along the coast takes everyone to Parma. The fifth and final leg concludes the race from Parma back to Brescia.

A figure 8 format was used by the original Mille Miglia from the inaugural edition in 1927 to 1938. World War II halted the race afterwards save for a one-off in 1940, which adopted a traditional loop course that became the norm following the war. The Mille Miglia continued with this layout until its cancellation after 1957, and it remained upon being revived as a vintage race twenty years later.