Rebellion Spierings to field Hilux, two buggies at 2025 Dakar Rally

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.

Team principal and Rebellion Timepieces president Alexandre Pesci has kept the Rebellion Racing name alive since then by racing the Dakar. Pesci and former Rebellion LMP1 driver Romain Dumas respectively finished thirty-second and fourteenth in the Ultimate class at the latest Dakar.

The 2025 Dakar Rally is scheduled for 3–17 January.