TOYOTA

 Since turning up to his first Dakar as a fresh-faced teenager in 2021, Seth Quintero has taken the world of rally-raid by storm. One of the most talented drivers of the emerging generation, the 21-year-old began racing lightweight prototypes at the age of 10 and bagged his first championship win at 11, which quickly put him on Red Bull’s radar. With their support, he climbed the ranks and continued to break records for fun, becoming the youngest driver to win a host of American offroad events and conquering the Best in the Desert series in 2019. At just 18, he made his Dakar debut alongside German co-driver Dennis Zenz. Seth and Dennis have done three seasons together in the T3 class, enjoying all manner of highs and lows. They’ve won stages galore at the Dakar, setting a new all-time record for a single edition with a mind-boggling 12 in 2022. But for a long time, overall success eluded them, with gearbox issues putting them out of contention at Dakar 2021, and broken differentials ruining their hopes on an otherwise flawless run in 2022. An errant wheel on Stage 4 of Dakar 2023 also cost them precious time, but Seth and Dennis did recover to finish second behind Austin Jones. Slowly but surely, they have started putting the pieces of the puzzle together. They took their first overall win at the Rallye du Maroc 2022, then managed to snatch victory in the 2023 World Rally-Raid Championship, despite issues in Mexico and Argentina. The dust had barely settled on that achievement when the big announcement was made: Seth and Dennis would be joining the Toyota Gazoo Racing team for Dakar 2024, stepping up into the Ultimate class. Remarkable as it sounds, a 21-year-old from San Marcos has thus been handed the keys to the Toyota GR DKR Hilux T1+, the formidable machine Nasser Al Attiyah drove to Dakar victory in 2022 and 2023. Such a move will clearly thrust the young Red Bull duo into the spotlight as they battle with rally-raid legends such as Stephane Peterhansel, Carlos Sainz, Sebastien Loeb and of course Al Attiyah himself. Seth already had a chance to test himself against the Qatari at the Dubai International Baja, showing impressive pace but suffering an unfortunate rear differential problem on the final stage. Despite his inexperience at this level, the young American will be carrying weighty expectations on his shoulders at Dakar 2024.