Rainbow Truck Team eschews 2025 Dakar Rally for Africa Eco Race

Rainbow Truck Team will celebrate its ten-year anniversary by forgoing the Dakar Rally in Saudi Arabia in favour of the ‘real’ Dakar rally: the Africa Eco Race.

At the 2024 Dakar in January, Gerrit Zuurmond finished fifteenth in the Truck category. Driving a MAN TGA with Tjeerd van Ballegooy and Klaas Kwakkel as co-driver and mechanic, he and the team raced fairly conservatively early on to stay out of trouble before being forced to retire during the Chrono Stage. The team also fielded a hydrogen-powered Volkswagen Amarok in Mission 1000 for Zuurmond’s brother Dick and Simon Koetsier, who finished seventh after being set back by the hydrogen fuel cell being detached during the middle stages.

“Friend and foe alike will agree that Africa is the cradle of off-road rally. This was where Thierry Sabine started an unprecedented adventure under the name ‘Paris–Dakar’ in 1979, where the Africa Eco Race has been taking place for years,” begins a statement from the team.

“In 2009, rally veterans René Metge and Jean-Louis Schlesser organised for the first time a rally that followed the ‘old’ African route of the Paris–Dakar. While the big commercial Dakar circus sought its refuge in South America, the Africa Eco Race evolved into the rally most driven in the spirit of Thierry Sabine. Finishing at Lac Rose in particularly is something that many rally raid participants want to experience at least once.

“Rainbow Truck Team wants to make its anniversary year something special and how wonderful would it be to take on the challenge in Africa.”

To prepare for the AER, the team will enter the Rallye du Maroc in October. A round of the World Rally-Raid Championship like the Dakar Rally, the event takes place in Morocco, one of the AER’s host countries. Zuurmond finished second in the Truck category at the 2023 edition.

Founded in 2014, Rainbow Truck Team will be among a handful of Dutch truck outfits at the AER that include Rally Team Dust Warriors and Truck Team Müller. The latter had competed exclusively in Europe before making their desert rally début at the Moroccan Carta Rallye in March.

The 2025 Africa Eco Race will run from 28 December 2024 to 12 January 2025. Tomáš Tomeček, another Dakar Rally alumnus, won the 2024 edition for trucks.