Behind the scenes with the Dacia Sandriders

Aside from the first ever running of the event, nobody has ever won the Dakar on its first attempt; the environment and the sheer distances involved present a steep learning curve for any team new to the event. But the Sandriders will be entering fresh from an astonishing first and second place at Rallye Du Maroc debut.

We caught up with the Sandriders at the Prodrive workshops in Oxfordshire, as the British team was chosen by Dacia as the partner for the project. And the collaborations don’t end there: the Sandriders campaign also benefits from assistance from fellow Renault Group family members Alpine (pitching in with expertise) and Nissan (for the V6 engine). All design work, however, was completed in-house by Dacia, even down to the styling of the bodywork which was penned by the same team that shapes showroom models.

The project began in the first quarter of 2023, the very first step being to ensure the cars would fulfil the needs of the driver and navigator crews, as Team Principal Tiphanie Isnard explains: “The first thing we did was welcome the crews to our office and say, ‘What do you need to perform? What do you need to be competitive?’ We are doing the toughest race in the world so it’s important that they feel comfortable in a robust car.”

Those crews are five-time Dakar winner Nasser Al-Attiyah and Édouard Boulanger; Cristina Gutiérrez, who became the second woman to win a Dakar stage in 2021, with navigator Pablo Moreno; and the world’s most successful WRC driver, Sébastien Loeb with navigator Fabian Lurquin.

It didn’t take long before Dacia and Prodrive engineers had the car ready for its initial development miles at Millbrook. “This roll-out is the simplest stage of development,” says Technical Director Philip Dunabin. "It’s just a straightforward systems check. It’s a short phase but absolutely essential to make sure that when you go to a more severe environment everything will work correctly.”

The next stage of development saw them head to Sweet Lamb in Wales to evaluate the handling and check that the suspension absorbs rough terrain as expected before heading further afield, where more challenging heat and severe topography is to be found.

In the South of France, there are bigger jumps, rock-lined roads and more holes in the surface to further challenge the car. Now, all three cars are covering around 250km per day, and drivers can give feedback on the suspension control, effectiveness of the air conditioning and seating position. It’s also a chance to evaluate visibility from the cabin, which Dacia’s designers were in control of. We’re told it’s about the best in class.

By June of this year, the Sandriders were ready for terrain more closely akin to that of the Dakar Rally. Morocco was the destination for a series of three six-to eight-day tests. In these real desert conditions, cars and crews were subjected to routes of 400 to 500km per day, meaning mechanics would send the cars off in the morning and not see them again until midday.

Throughout the programme, the team would be working with the Prodrive drawing office to tweak and enhance design elements in the pursuit of reliability. By the time the Sandriders entered the Rallye Du Maroc, they’d covered 10,000 miles in testing and knew they would be competitive. What they didn’t anticipate was taking the first two steps of the podium. “That was a lot more than we expected,” says Dunabin.

But even that competitive debut was viewed by the team as an extension of testing ahead of the Dakar Rally. It was a chance to subject the cars in a genuine competitive environment ahead of the big challenge that’s to come. There’s certainly no resting on laurels going on here – team members are experienced enough to know how difficult the Dakar can be. What’s more, they know all the weaknesses Morocco revealed and are currently working to bolster the car’s durability and reliability.

Reliability is the watchword for everything the team does. While the supporting cast of mechanics are allowed to work on the cars in the bivouacs overnight and on the road where the support routes and rally routes coincide, at all other times the crews are on their own. Not only do repairs cause delays, they also distract from the routine maintenance required. There are daily checks, for instance, of items like gaitors and brake discs so that they can be replaced before they cause problems. 

Other components are considered service items mid-way through the rally. For example, all those test miles mean the team knows how long, say, a steering rack will last, so there’s a defined schedule to replace it. “It’s rare to have to replace something because it’s a surprise,” says Dunabin. “The number one rule of Dakar is not to have a problem in the first place. You can afford not to win the stages every day, but you can’t afford to lose time through problems."

Some items are not due to be replaced at all once the race begins. While the rules allow for an engine change, the layout of the car means it’s so buried that it would take around ten hours to execute – and also comes with a 50-hour time penalty, which would put the car out of contention for victory. Thankfully, the regulations support reliability. Engines must be derived from a production car, and the permitted power output is restricted. 

All the internals of the Nissan V6 are straight from the production line, but many of the ancillaries have been developed for the task at hand. There’s a dry sump, uprated turbocharger, a new exhaust manifold and a bespoke intercooler. Rivals Mini and Toyota also use turbocharged V6 engine, while Ford has a V8. We can expect greater diversity of engine configurations when 2026 regulations come in –  these will monitor output with a torque meter rather than by controlling the engine management for a homologated power curve. 

There used to be provision for hybrids in the rules, but that has been dropped in the interest of keeping things simple. For the same reason, you won’t find paddleshift gearchanges, instead sequential levers are mandated. Even so, there’s much complexity when you get into the detail of a rally raid car. “They’re physically very big, but they are proper racing cars,” says Dunabin. At the heart of their construction is a sturdy tubular steel spaceframe chassis. There are some big crashes in the dunes, so they need to be tough to stand up to any potential impacts. The bodywork is made from carbon fibre.

While the cars are big on the outside, there’s not much space inside the cabin. The V6 engine is sited back between the driver and navigator, encroaching on the available space. The cabin itself is lined with heat reflective material, and an air conditioning system does its best to keep the heat under control. During the event, ambient temperatures are typically above 40 degrees celsius and can exceed 50. We can only imagine what it’s like when crews have to change one of the 45kg wheels in such conditions...

The Dacia Sandriders are the first rally raid cars to feature a damper mechanism for the seat to help prevent back injuries when they land heavily, and it’s a feature that will be compulsory from 2027.

Comfort for the driver and navigator is very important given the task at hand. “Navigation requires an awful lot of patience,” says Dunabin. “A lot of the time there’s not a clearly defined track, so they have to drive avoiding the obstacles while maintaining the correct heading. It’s not at all like a world championship rally where the guy on the other side is reading from a set of pace notes and they don’t need to worry about where they’re going. Here, it’s very much a big job for the navigator and it is teamwork between the navigator and the driver. It is very easy to deviate from the trace in the roadbook.”

Add in the obstacles of dunes to drive around while maintaining the correct direction, and you can see why teamwork is imperative. Moreover, crews only get the next direction on the pre-loaded route when they come within a certain radius of each waypoint. “It is extremely easy to go faster than you’re actually going,” says Dunabin, commenting that outright speed isn’t everything on the Dakar rally. Sometimes, in fact, it’s better not to finish a stage in the fastest time as that means you’d be the first car out the next day, which isn’t always desirable.

The Dakar Rally is a truly monumental undertaking and, even after victory in Rallye Du Maroc, the Dacia Sandriders aren’t overstating their chances in this most gruelling of motorsports. “Our aim is to do as well as we can do,” says Dunabin.

Could that be a historic debut win in January...?