Sébastien Loeb (Dacia) is not the type to worry before the start of a race. Including when it takes place over two weeks like the Dakar! The Alsatian, returning from the shakedown carried out not far from the bivouac in Bisha (Saudi Arabia) on January 1, 2025, was relaxed. “Everything is ready for departure (January 3)I want it to start”, he confirms.
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The 2025 Dakar will mark his ninth participation in eight. Since its thunderous debut in South America (9th with 4 stage victories in 2016), rally-raid has evolved well according to the nine-time world rally champion.
“Now we don’t know any special stages. Already during the South American Dakar, the organization began distributing road books the day before the stage, at 5 p.m. The mapmen were responsible for working all night to identify the difficulties of the route in order to give as much information as possible to the co-pilot when he woke up the next day. I remember Daniel (Elena) who worked late into the evening to highlight “hot” passages and write annotations.
Now, the road book on tablet is only updated 5 minutes before the start of the stage! Fabian (Lurquin) barely has time to take a quick look at the road book, and then it’s a total discovery during the race. This requires the co-pilot to have a good capacity for adaptation, understanding and improvisation. »
In terms of pure driving, Sébastien Loeb loves the Dakar… but perhaps not every day. “I’m always happy to ride. Even if the Dakar is long! Some mornings, I see that we have to hit 700 terminals”he says, heaving a sigh of weariness.
“You can feel these types of days passing by!” In special stages, you have to be fully concentrated for hundreds of kilometers. Which makes me say that I’m happy to finish a stage, just as I’m happy to start again the next day. But after 10 days, you say to yourself: “Ugh, can’t wait for the end anyway”.
Curiously, Sébastien Loeb felt this disgust to a greater degree during the Dakar in South America (2016 to 2019). An exacerbation which was explained by his less experience of the discipline, requiring better endurance than the WRC.
“I was full of it after 100 terminals! And yet, I really liked the course at that time (inspired by WRC specials, with little off-road. Editor’s note). I wasn’t used to doing 400 km specials. I happened to take a look at my co-pilot’s on-board screen and see that we had only covered 80 km in the space of 1h30, or 60 km on average, because of a section super brittle and technical. It seemed endless to me! »
At almost 51 years old (he will celebrate his birthday on February 26, 2025), Sébastien Loeb has become an expert in long-distance rides! It remains to be seen whether this metamorphosis will finally pay off on a Dakar that he has never won.
