2023 Dakar Rally: 18-year-old Eryk Goczal fends off Baciuska for T4 win

The battle for the 2023 Dakar Rally‘s T4 was a tale of two drivers with different backgrounds. In one corner was Rokas Baciuška, the reigning World Rally-Raid Champion now receiving support from SSV powerhouses Red Bull and Can-Am. He faced off against Eryk Goczał, an eighteen-year-old Polish drifting champion with limited cross-country rally experience who just received his driving licence in October. Despite his youth, Goczał proved age matters little as he became the youngest stage and overall winner in Dakar Rally history.

Their duel came down to the fourteenth and final stage, when Baciuška entered with a lead of three minutes and twenty-four seconds over Goczał. However, a broken driveshaft in the closing stretch killed Baciuška’s chances for good as Goczał drove off to win by sixteen minutes.

“I just wanted to be at the finish line in this début start, and we’ve won the rally,” posted Goczał on social media. “It’s been an incredibly difficult rally. Two days ago we’ve made very difficult decision about our strategy. I’m so grateful to my family – to my dad and uncle – about how they helped us. They just put us in the first place and done everything that we could win. And it payed off.”

Baciuška seemed to draw first blood by winning the Prologue and Stage #1, but a fifteen-minute penalty in the latter promoted Goczał to the top spot. Fellow teenager Pau Navarro finished second ahead of Goczał’s uncle Michal Goczał, who is nearly twice his age.

Eryk’s father Marek Goczał, who had the 2022 T4 championship slip away after crashing in the final round in Andalucía, took the second stage. All three family members would win a leg with Eryk notching four, Marek two, and Michal one. By the end, Marek was third behind his son and Baciuška while Michal placed seventh.

Besides Baciuška and the Goczałs, Rodrigo Luppi de Oliveira was the only other driver to lead the general rankings when he was first in Stages #5 and #6. However, an engine failure in Stage #9 ended his hopes of vying for the overall win.

Sébastien Loeb Racing, whose namesake owner finished second in the T1 race, débuted a Polaris T4 programme with former Bike riders Xavier de Soultrait and Florent Vaysadde. While neither had much experience on four wheels, Vaysadde impressed with a tenth-place finish while Soultrait was nineteenth.

Vaysadde’s Polaris RZR was the lone vehicle in the top ten that was not a Can-Am, who has swept the T4 podium every year since 2019. Can-Am has also dominated the adjacent T3 category, where vehicles are purpose built for racing unlike the production models in T4, as Red Bull’s Austin Jones won. T3 runner-up Seth Quintero was previously the youngest Dakar stage winner in 2021, which Goczał surpassed with his Stage #1 triumph as he was roughly a month younger than when Quintero set the record.

Toomas Triisa came short of the top ten in eleventh, but still made history as he and Rally Raid Estonia team-mate Urvo Männama (T1) were the first Estonians to compete at Dakar in an FIA category. With Männama retiring due to a flip in the Empty Quarter Marathon, Triisa became the first of his countrymen to complete the Rally on four wheels. He previously won the Malle Moto subcategory in 2017.

“Our expectations were a bit higher in the beginning, but I think that in the end we can be satisfied with the result,” said Triisa. “In the end, we came away happy. This year, we were in eleventh place. The big goal during the Rally was to be in the top ten and to be in the top ten by the end of the day. We saw our place move up several times but in the end, we finished eleventh.

“The podium dream is still alive. We’ll see what the future brings.”

T4 overall top ten

Finish	Number	Driver	Co-Driver	Team	Time	Margin
1	428	Eryk Goczał	Oriol Mena	EnergyLandia Rally Team	53:10:14	Leader
2	400	Rokas Baciuška	Oriol Vidal Montijano	Red Bull Can-Am Factory Team	53:26:58	+ 16:44
3	401	Marek Goczał	Maciej Marton	EnergyLandia Rally Team	53:28:29	+ 18:15
4	412	Jeremías González Ferioli*	Pedro Gonzalo Rinaldo	South Racing Can-Am	54:17:14	+ 1:07:00
5	402	Gerard Farrés*	Diego Ortega	South Racing Can-Am	54:59:32	+ 1:49:18
6	409	Bruno Conti de Oliveira	Pedro Bianchi Prata	South Racing Can-Am	56:12:35	+ 3:02:21
7	405	Michal Goczał	Szymon Gospodarczyk	EnergyLandia Rally Team	57:12:53	+ 4:02:39
8	430	Sebastian Guayasamin	Ricardo Adrian Torlaschi	South Racing Can-Am	57:57:48	+ 4:47:34
9	407	Pau Navarro	Michael Metge	FN Speed Team	58:01:14	+ 4:51:00
10	418	Florent Vayssade*	Nicolas Rey	Sébastien Loeb Racing/Bardahl Team	59:21:58	+ 6:11:44

* – Not competing in World Rally-Raid Championship

T4 stage winners

Stage	Number	Competitor	Team	Time
Prologue	400	Rokas Baciuška	Red Bull Can-Am Factory Team	9:06
Stage #1	428	Eryk Goczał	EnergyLandia Rally Team	4:11:58
Stage #2	401	Marek Goczał	EnergyLandia Rally Team	5:45:31
Stage #3	437	Cristiano Batista*	South Racing Can-Am	4:21:05
Stage #4	428	Eryk Goczał	EnergyLandia Rally Team	5:18:41
Stage #5	400	Rokas Baciuška	Red Bull Can-Am Factory Team	5:02:52
Stage #6	401	Marek Goczał	EnergyLandia Rally Team	3:43:18
Stage #7	400	Rokas Baciuška	Red Bull Can-Am Factory Team	3:45:34
Stage #8	412	Jeremías González Ferioli*	South Racing Can-Am	4:16:18
Stage #9	428	Eryk Goczał	EnergyLandia Rally Team	3:42:20
Stage #10	402	Gerard Farrés*	South Racing Can-Am	1:58:22
Stage #11	400	Rokas Baciuška	Red Bull Can-Am Factory Team	3:25:13
Stage #12	405	Michal Goczał	EnergyLandia Rally Team	2:19:07
Stage #13	428	Eryk Goczał	EnergyLandia Rally Team	2:35:13
Stage #14	444	Carlos Vento Sanchez*	Patriot Racing Team	1:21:54

Overall winners

Class	Number	Competitor	Team	Time
T1	200	Nasser Al-Attiyah	Toyota Gazoo Racing	45:03:15
T2	250	Ronald Basso*	Team Land Cruiser Toyota Auto Body	107:39:42
T3	303	Austin Jones	Red Bull Off-Road Junior Team	51:55:53
T4	428	Eryk Goczał	EnergyLandia Rally Team	53:10:14
T5	502	Janus van Kasteren	Boss Machinery Team de Rooy IVECO	54:03:33
RallyGP	47	Kevin Benavides	Red Bull KTM Factory Racing	44:27:20
Rally2	17	Romain Dumontier	Team Dumontier Racing	47:03:58
Malle Moto	40	Charan Moore*	HT Rally Raid Husqvarna Racing	52:24:42
Quad	151	Alexandre Giroud*	Drag’on Rally Team	56:44:30
Classic	778	Juan Morera*	Toyota Classic	428 points