Diespro Adventour & Racing Logistics will provide assistance for multiple bike and quad riders as the World Rally-Raid Championship visits their home soil for the first time at the Sonora Rally on 25–28 April. Among those under Diespro’s wing are a pair hoping to get a shot to compete at the 2024 Dakar Rally as Jatin Jain and Sebastián Olarte plan to take part in the Road to Dakar category.
A former supercross rider from Nagpur, Maharashtra, Jain won back-to-back FMSCI National Rally Championships in 2018 and 2019 (Group 1A) before expanding to international competition in 2020. The only Indian privateer, he made his début at the Hispania Rally in Spain and finished fifth in class.
Olarte, a Colombian-American, returns to Diespro hoping to rebound after retiring from the 2022 Sonora Rally three stages in. Prior to his exit, he was sitting as high as eighteenth overall after two legs. He was one of fifteen riders in the 2022 edition’s Road to Dakar category, which included the likes of 2023 Dakar Rally competitors Morrison Hart, Ace Nilson, and David Pearson.
Matt Sutherland, the 2022 Mexican 1000 winner and another rider with Diespro support, was also a Road to Dakar competitor at that year’s Sonora. With the Sonora Rally and Mexican 1000 set to take place back-to-back, he and Matthew Glade will run both races as Malle Moto/Ironman riders, meaning they will not have any outside assistance for either event.
The Road to Dakar is aimed at getting amateur riders and T4 drivers to the Dakar Rally via free entry if they excel at select races. All four rounds of the W2RC are part of the programme, as is the South Africa Rally-Raid Championship’s TGRSA 1000 Desert Race. Tobias Ebster won the Rally2 overall at the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge in March to clinch that event’s Road to Dakar victory. While the TGRSA 1000 Desert Race will only have the programme for T4, the Sonora Rally’s Dakar ticket is limited to bike riders.
Diespro will also provide service for the Rally2 bike of Mario Garrido Alonso and Quads of Rodolfo Guillioli and Mauricio Segura. Guillioli finished fourth overall in Quad at the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge, while the latter is competing as a National rider rather than a W2RC-eligible entry.