2024 Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge: 101 on entry list

Regardless of solely being the second spherical of the World Rally-Raid Championship, the Abu Dhabi Desert Problem will likely be lacking some main star energy as Dakar Rally total winners Staff Audi Sport and Monster Power Honda Rally Staff are absent. Forty-five drivers and fifty-six riders will hope to step it up of their place.

Whereas Dakar bike winner Honda will return for the BP Final Rally Raid in April, Audi is gone totally: though Audi lastly received the Dakar on the FIA aspect with Carlos Sainz and had plans of racing for the championship, a scarcity of appropriate elements expedited their supposed shutdown on the finish of 2024 to Tuesday. Sainz, Mattias Ekström, and Stéphane Peterhansel are permitted to race for different groups and lessons, although none are collaborating. Peterhansel’s co-driver Édouard Boulanger will nonetheless present as much as Abu Dhabi as the brand new navigator for Nasser Al-Attiyah, who parted methods with Mathieu Baumel after a profitable decade in rally raid.

After his Dakar defence led to catastrophe, Al-Attiyah hopes to make up misplaced floor with Prodrive. His ally Sébastien Loeb and Bahrain Raid Xtreme, who received 5 levels at Dakar, should not entered, although brothers Cristian and Marcos Baumgart will fill the void. With Audi and Loeb gone, the eighteen-driver Final class is all of the extra up for grabs. Sainz’s absence means Toyota can have a chance to take the factors lead courtesy of Overdrive Racing’s Guillaume de Mévius and Guerlain Chicherit, who respectively path Sainz by eighteen and twenty factors. Fellow Toyota driver Yazeed Al-Rajhi, contemporary off successful the FIA Baja World Cup’s Saudi Baja, is aiming to go back-to-back within the ADDC.

A championship lead change can be assured in Challenger as Mitch Guthrie just isn’t racing both, which Rokas Baciuška hopes to capitalise on; Baciuška exited Dakar seventeen factors behind Guthrie. Dakar winner Cristina Gutiérrez is entered however not competing for the championship.

Yasir Seaidan completed third in SSV at Dakar, which gave him the class’s factors lead as Xavier de Soultrait and Jérôme de Sadeleer weren’t eligible for factors. He can have a brand new co-driver for Abu Dhabi in Michaël Metge, who replaces his youthful brother Adrien.

RallyGP, regardless of being the highest bike class, will function a paltry 4 entrants. Honda made up the majority of the category at Dakar however is skipping Abu Dhabi to present their six riders a relaxation (aside from Tosha Schareina, who’s competing on this weekend’s FIM E-Xplorer World Cup), whereas defending champion Luciano Benavides of Husqvarna in addition to the KTM and GasGas manufacturing unit groups should not racing for factors. With so many riders skipping Abu Dhabi, Hero MotoSports has a golden alternative as Ross Department is nearly assured to take the factors lead, presently trailing Honda’s Ricky Brabec by eight factors, and Sebastian Bühler will attempt to bounce again from his Dakar crash. The one different two RallyGP riders entered, Mohammed Al-Balooshi and Aaron Marè, should not W2RC-eligible; Al-Balooshi is the reigning FIM Bajas World Cup champion who just lately received the Saudi Baja, whereas Marè enters his first W2RC race because the 2022 Dakar Rally, by the way racing for Hero that point.

Rally2 options forty-seven riders however the high two Romain Dumontier and Bradley Cox should not amongst them. Third-placed Jean-Loup Lepan will attempt to leapfrog each, tailing the previous by fourteen, whereas sequence common Michael Docherty is looking for to determine a foothold after crashing out of the opener. Lepan is certainly one of simply 4 riders within the high ten standings at Abu Dhabi alongside Tobias Ebster (seventh), Konrad Dąbrowski (ninth), and Jan Brabec (tenth). Though outdoors the highest ten, David McBride and Oran O’Kelly have an opportunity to make important leaps as nicely.

Ebster received each the ADDC in Rally2 and the Street to Dakar problem in 2023, the latter granting him free registration for the Dakar. Justin Gerlach and Jonathan Savel hopes to do the identical for Dakar 2025 by means of the RtD after developing brief final yr, whereas Willem Avenant is striving for it in his first main step in direction of ‘decoding’ Dakar.

Saulius Klevinskas, a former goalkeeper who performed for the Lithuanian nationwide workforce, enters his first W2RC race after primarily competing in beginner rallies just like the Breslau Rallye and Fenix Rally. One other sequence newcomer is Christoph Lischka, the pinnacle of improvement for BMW Motorrad.

Though all Quad riders at Dakar are registered for the W2RC, Hani Al-Noumesi is the one one collaborating at Abu Dhabi. Abdulaziz Ahli will likely be going for his fourth consecutive ADDC win within the class. Kamil Wiśniewski returns to the championship after lacking Dakar with a knee damage.

The 2024 Abu Dhabi Desert Problem begins with the Prologue stage on 26 February and runs by means of 2 March.

FIA entry listing

Final

Challenger

SSV

FIM entry listing

RallyGP

Rally2

Quad