If something happens to any drivers in the Extreme E season opener at the Desert X Prix in Saudi Arabia, Romain Dumas and Hedda Hosås will be there to help out.
The series announced Thursday that Dumas and Hosås have been tasked as guest Championship Drivers for the Desert X Prix, meaning they will be advisors and reserve drivers in the event that a team needs to make a driver switch. The duo will work alongside Timo Scheider and Tamara Molinaro, who serve in the same capacity for the entire season and have been in the positions since 2021. Jutta Kleinschmidt is the only Championship Driver to have needed to step in when she took over for an ill Claudia Hürtgen at ABT CUPRA XE at the 2021 Island X Prix and eventually the rest of the season, which led to Molinaro succeeding Kleinschmidt.
Dumas primarily competes in sports cars and was a longtime factory driver for Porsche. He is a two-time winner of the 24 Hours of Le Mans, scoring the overall with Audi and Porsche in 2010 and 2016, and has also raced in the Rolex 24 Hours of Daytona with three podium finishes in his class. In 2016, he and Porsche won the LMP1 title in the FIA World Endurance Championship.
While his pavement achievements are certainly vast, he is also more than familiar with off-road and mixed-surface competition. Dumas won the Pikes Peak International Hill Climb four times in 2014 and from 2016 to 2018, with his last victory seeing him become the first driver to complete the 20-km hillclimb in under eight minutes as he did so in an electric Volkswagen ID R. The Frenchman also dabbled as a privateer in the World Rally Championship between 2012 and 2017, while his rally raid experience includes the Baja 1000 and Dakar Rally.
“I am very happy to be here and to discover the Championship for real,” commented Dumas. “I followed it last year and was hoping to get to an X Prix as well, but I wasn’t able to unfortunately. I do like to get involved in different types of racing, so this is a great fit.
“Electric cars are great to drive because you have so much power. That makes for a lot of fun behind the wheel, and I am sure we will see that this weekend when the racing begins.”
The 20-year-old Hosås primarily competes in rallycross in her home country of Norway, regularly racing in the Norwegian Rallycross Championship after previously running motocross. She currently serves as Veloce Racing‘s reserve driver, an opportunity that arose after connecting with the team through FIA European Rallycross Championship driver and mentor Ulrik Linnemann. Hosås was supposed to participate in the Rookie Invitational Test a week after the Island X Prix in October, but the team’s car was involved in a wreck during said event’s Crazy Race that forced them to withdraw.
“I’m really excited to be the guest female Extreme E championship driver for the first round of Season 2,” said Hosås. “I’ve followed the series with huge interest since it launched and it was a privilege to be nominated by Veloce Racing for last year’s Rookie Test, even though I was not able to get behind the wheel.
“I’m going to really enjoy supporting the sporting team on a range of things in Neom. Electric cars are a lot of fun to drive and environmentally friendly new technologies are going to be the way forward, so I am thrilled to be part of the Championship alongside Romain this weekend.”
The Desert X Prix will take place on 19/20 February.