MINI

“It means that when you work hard and you believe in yourself, when you have a good team and good people around you, then the work will always pay off. To finish and to win the Dakar, well, I’m so happy for Audi. I think the energy comes from the passion I have. It’s obviously, believing in yourself, believing that you can still drive and a lot of work behind the scenes as well. To be here at my age and to stay at the level, you need to work a lot beforehand. It doesn’t just come like that. It shows that when you work hard, normally it pays off. At the moment, I want to enjoy this victory and I will think about my future in the next weeks.”

Sixty-one-year-old Carlos Sainz has lost none of his trademark competitive spirit. The twice world rally champion from Madrid (1990 and 1992), who marked an era in the discipline, is looking for his fourth Dakar victory (2010, 2018 and 2020) and wants to do it in style: becoming the first driver to do it with a vehicle powered by electric motors and a range extender (3 MGU05s from Formula E and a TFSI 2.0 engine from the DTM). But this year is like a farewell and a last chance to make history, as Audi Sport will compete in its third and final Dakar as a factory team following its new venture into Formula 1 for the 2026 season. Sainz is a genuine reference in rallying circles, although his sporting beginnings began in a very different discipline, squash. He was the Spanish champion at the age of 16. His obsession with detail and perfection are two traits that have always defined him since he started racing a rally car. In fact, it was his competitive spirit that made a mark on a generation of fans with his two WRC titles and 26 championship victories. In a vote on the official World Rally Championship website in 2020, fans from around the world voted him the greatest ever, ahead of even nine-time World Rally Champion Sébastien Loeb. Sainz's desert adventures began in 2006 with Volkswagen, where he competed in the last two editions of the Dakar in Africa. However, it was not until 2010, in South America, that he and his inseparable co-driver Lucas Cruz enjoyed lifting the famous Touareg trophy into the sky. They repeated the feat with Peugeot in 2018 and Mini X-Raid in 2020. In2023, after recovering from the two fractured vertebrae he suffered on last year's Dakar, he has competed in the Baja Aragon and Morocco Rally, as well as logging several thousand test kilometres in the Audi RS Q e-tron E2 and serving as team boss of his own Extreme E team. The regulations have given the Audi Sport team 15kW (20bhp) more power than its main rivals, although they will still be around 100 kg heavier than the Toyota and Prodrive 4x4s. Sainz and Cruz were looking forward to providing the coup de grace to the German manufacturer's unique and difficult-to-repeat project. For their 10th Dakar together, they have seek their fourth Touareg with a fourth different manufacturer. "El Matador" isn't ready to hang up his helmet and wants to continue to add to his legacy. For his return to the third round of the championship in Portugal and Spain, the four-time Dakar winner has chosen a Mini JCW Rally Plus from the X-raid team. This is a first in the team's T1+ for the man who had already spent four Dakar (2018-21) with Mini and won the 2020 Dakar with the two-wheel drive buggy. For the occasion, a new co-driver has also arrived on his right. His compatriot Alex Haro, Nani Roma's navigator from 2016 to 2019 in the Mini All 4 at the time. He also has big time with Mini!