PARIS — Dacia will sponsor a factory team to race the Dakar desert rally in 2025 as a way to showcase carbon-neutral mobility using synthetic fuels, brand CEO Denis Le Vot said.
The Renault brand’s entries will be driven by the French rally champion Sebastien Loeb and Christina Gutierrez of Spain, a stage winner and seven-time participant in the adventure race.
“Dakar is becoming a lab for low-carbon mobility,” Le Vot said, “and this is precisely the mission of Dacia.”
Le Vot would not say what kind of car Dacia would race, but he said that the technical partner will be Prodrive, a racing company that has built Dakar entries for Volkswagen, Peugeot, Citroen, Toyota and others. More details will be revealed early next year, he said.
The team will have a test race in 2024, he said, with an official entry in 2025.
The synthetic fuels will be developed and supplied by Aramco, which will be a partner with Renault Group and Geely in a planned venture to develop and build internal-combustion engines called Horse.
Renault Group CEO Luca de Meo has said synthetic e-fuels, which can be produced using renewable energy, would be a good match for Dacia, a budget brand that he said will go full electric “as late as possible” to keep prices low.
The European Union has recently said it would create an exception for e-fuels in the 2035 emissions regulations, which mandate zero emission for new cars sold.
The Dakar rally started as the Paris-Dakar race in the late 1970s, but security concerns in recent years have relocated it from Africa to routes in South America and, now, Saudi Arabia.
Loeb, who won numerous World Rally championships with Citroen, said the Dakar rally is now his main focus and that he wanted to “fight for the win” with Dacia.
He and Gutierrez were the 2022 champions of Extreme E, a series for full-electric off-road vehicles.
The team will include “in-house skills” from Renault Group, which sponsors Formula One and endurance racing teams unde the Alpine brand, Le Vot said.
Le Vot said racing Dakar also fit with Dacia’s recent focus on outdoor adventure marketing, including the new Manifesto concept car, an electric off-road buggy.