Dacia Sandriders confront their first challenge in Morocco

That said, some of the Dacia Sandrider crews may come home from Morocco having clinched the 2024 title. Having competed for another team during the season, five-time Dakar winner Nasser Al-Attiyah and Édouard Boulanger are in contention for the championship. “From my side we need to be clever,” said Al-Attiyah. “We need to manage with a good speed and do no crazy thing because the Sandrider is a new car and we must try to work day by day. I hope to win the world title and be the world champion, it would be nice for me and for my co-driver Edouard as well.”

Another of the three Dacia Sandriders will be driven by Cristina Gutiérrez (with Pablo Moreno), who became the second woman to win a Dakar stage in 2021. “It will be my first race in a new category as I jump from the Challenger to the Ultimate class,” said Gutiérrez. “A lot of new things are coming as it’s a new car, new category and new team but I already feel very comfortable with the Dacia Sandriders. I have some pressure but it's a positive pressure, the type that makes you give the best of yourself.”

History’s most successful WRC driver, Sébastien Loeb (with Fabian Lurquin), takes the seat in the team’s third car. He said: “After all the hard work in testing we can finally measure ourselves against the competition and see where we are in terms of performance, but also because we’re starting a new adventure with this top team. It will be a full-scale test, a live rehearsal, you could say.”

The Dacia Sandriders’ Team Principal Tiphanie Isnard adds: “You can’t run before you can walk and that’s why we’ve entered the final round of the 2024 FIA World Rally-Raid Championship, to get more important practice and confirm all that we have been learning and developing during testing.”

Dacia has covered test miles in the UK, France and Morocco, but the real test will come amongst the sand dunes, rocks, gravel and intense heat of Rallye du Maroc. The five stages total 2,468km in length, of which 1,512km is made of timed sections against the clock. The World Rally-Raid Championship, or W2RC, was first run in 2021 sanctioned by both the FIA and the Fédération Internationale de Motocyclisme (FIM). Nasser Al-Attiyah claimed the title in that inaugural year.

The Rallye Du Maroc promises to provide the Dacia Sandriders and its stellar driver line-up with a pretty hot warm-up for next year’s Dakar.