Who said the best in the business could only race in the highest category?
With the World Rally-Raid Championship on a four-month break, Nasser Al-Attiyah will dabble in the Challenger class for the first time when he drives a Taurus T3 Max at the Baja España Aragón on 26–28 July. His effort will be fielded under the Taurus B.V. banner (a joint collaboration between MCE-5 Development and Wevers Sport) with Édouard Boulanger as his co-driver as usual.
Al-Attiyah is atop the W2RC with one race to go, leading Yazeed Al-Rajhi by twenty-five points with wins at the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge and BP Ultimate Rally-Raid. 2024 is his first year with Prodrive, racing a Prodrive Hunter for the first four rounds before the team switches to the new Dacia Sandrider for the season-ending Rallye du Maroc in October.
While Aragón will be his first racing foray in Challenger, Al-Attiyah is no stranger to the vehicles it hosts. Last July, after winning the 2023 Baja Aragón in a Toyota Hilux, he test drove an MCE-5 T3M (predecessor to the Taurus T3 Max) around his Nasser Racing Camp at nearby Castellfollit del Boix. He had high praise for the T3, describing it as a “really nice machine” that “young drivers and new generation” should drive before they consider higher categories.
It is not uncommon for drivers to try out other categories even if they already have extensive experience in the premier Ultimate division. In April, Prodrive colleague Sébastien Loeb entered the BP Ultimate Rally-Raid in a Taurus; despite Challenger being a lower tier, Loeb displayed impressive pace that included nearly winning Stage #2 outright as he lost to Al-Attiyah’s Prodrive Hunter by just thirty-five seconds.
He will be one of fifty-eight Challenger cars racing at Aragón, including thirteen Tauruses. Other faces include a trio of the new Apache hybrid car led by WRC veteran Pierre-Louis Loubet, Italian Baja winner João Dias, the husband/wife duo of Erik and Anja Van Loon, and the great Niki Lauda’s son Lukas Lauda.
“I’m very happy that several fantastic drivers will show up in our class, including Nasser Al-Attiyah,” wrote Eryk Goczał, a fellow Taurus driver who dominated the Dakar Rally in Challenger until his disqualification. “If you’re looking for perfection and compare times, it’s to the best.”
Baja Aragón is the third round of the 2024 FIA World Baja Cup. Al-Attiyah won the race en route to the 2023 title.