Defender will arrive on the Dakar in a dusted category

Land Rover group brand, Defender will indeed arrive on the Dakar next year. The more detailed outlines of this new program were revealed this Friday in Saudi Arabia, where the start of the 2025 edition of the largest rally-raid in the world was given.

Defender is committed to a program of at least three years and will integrate the Stock category, because the choice was made not to design a prototype meeting the Ultimate regulations. These are two examples of the legendary Defender which will be lined up for all the rounds of the world rally raid championship, with a third for the Dakar.

Reserved for production cars, the Stock category will undergo a serious dusting with a significant update of the technical regulations which govern it, in order to make it more competitive and to give a chance to the manufacturers who choose it to demonstrate their abilities. This technical orientation, supported by the organizing bodies, is assumed by the British brand while Toyota, Dacia and Ford all have T1+ machines.

We wanted the challenge to be bringing our real car.

“For us, coming to Ultimate was not synonymous with authenticity, the Defender is the first all-terrain vehicle”justifies James Barclay, managing director of Jaguar Land Rover Motorsport. “It was the first four-wheel drive off-road vehicle in history, so for us, getting involved in motorsport is not an obligation.”

“We only do it if it's possible in the right way, and the right way is to demonstrate the capabilities of our incredible Defender as a production car. Coming up with a car that has a chassis that isn't Defender There's nothing authentic about it in our opinion. We wanted the challenge to be about bringing our real car to show what it's capable of, and to support that vision.”

“ASO and the FIA ​​had to look at the regulations and they said they needed to be improved. It was based on a very old production vehicle concept, and we worked with them to bring the regulations in line with reality of what a modern SUV is. The Defender has an aluminum architecture, what we call the D7X platform, with a unibody construction that is three times stiffer than the traditional way of building an SUV. The engines are also very interesting, and we will give more information on this later.”

Defender has not yet announced any drivers for its new rally-raid program but does not hide its need to turn to experienced profiles. The brand was until now an official partner of the Dakar, notably supplying vehicles to the organization or for reconnaissance.

Comments collected by Mario Galán