Renault’s daughter wants to go to Dakar 2025: Nine-time world rally champion now drives Dacia

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“Win on Sunday, sell on Monday” – this saying was still true in the 1950s and 1960s. In other words, if an auto brand triumphed in motorsport on Sunday, new car customers flocked to showrooms the following Monday. Those celebrating successes in the race can often look forward to increased sales figures.

And today? Motorsport is expensive, increasingly complex, and its usefulness in car sales has long been conclusively proven. However, Dacia is now also entering the racetrack. Renault’s budget brand wants to participate in the Dakar Rally in 2025. The two-week journey through the deserts of Saudi Arabia is considered the toughest rally in the world.

You have to win the Dakar

Two racing stars will pilot Dacia cars: Spaniard Cristina Gutiérrez (31) is a qualified dentist and one of only two women to win the Dakar stage in seven races in the Dakar. Nine-time World Rally Champion Sébastien Loeb (49) is in the second cockpit. The French driver has won several Dakar stages since 2016.

How does expensive motorsport fit into a budget brand? No problem for Dacia CEO Denis Le Vot, 58: “Our cars rely on internal combustion engines that are robust, reliable and have the lowest possible emissions”. Today’s Dakar is no longer yesterday’s – it’s turned into a tech lab for alternative, emission-free driving, rather than a crazy activity for the adventurers of the past.

Synthetic fuel for ecological balance

That’s why, according to Le Vot, Dacia relies on so-called e-fuels for its future rally cars. These synthetic fuels are made, for example, from green hydrogen produced using green electricity and from CO₂ in the ambient air. The fuel will be provided by Saudi oil giant Aramco, with whom the Renault group has been collaborating since March.

The brand can also afford to take part in the Dakar: thanks to the Sandero model, it is in the top three of the European sales charts. The rising prices of new cars due to inflation, raw material costs and the consequences of the war would bring many new customers to Dacia and increase sales.

serious commitment

Renault CEO Luca de Meo (56) recently announced, incidentally, that Dacia should rely on e-fuels in the future. For price reasons alone, the low-cost Dacia models will become fully electrified much later than sister brands Renault and Alpine models, reducing their emissions with synthetic fuel, which until then has been produced in a CO₂ neutral manner.

Le Vot doesn’t want to reveal more about the Dakar race cars and rides yet. But the project is taken very seriously. Also Gutiérrez and Loeb – both want to focus entirely on Dacia and off-road racing.

Source: Blick