After months of hypothesis, Carlos Sainz is formally again with the Blue Oval. On Friday, Ford Efficiency and M-Sport introduced he’ll drive the Ford Ranger T1+ on the 2025 Dakar Rally in hopes of his fifth win and second in a row.
Sainz is not any stranger to Ford or M-Sport. He was a member of Ford’s manufacturing facility World Rally Championship crew in 1996/97 and from 2000 to 2002, and had began his WRC profession with the marque within the late Nineteen Eighties. He gained 5 rallies in a Ford with 4 third-place factors finishes throughout his two stints with the crew.
Ford would be the seventh completely different producer that Sainz races for at Dakar after Volkswagen, Demon Jefferies, SMG, Peugeot, Mini, and Audi. Regardless of profitable the 2024 version for Audi, the crew shut down in February resulting from not having sufficient components to contest the World Rally-Raid Championship. This compelled Sainz to desert his plans of competing for the title, and he rejoined Mini for the BP Final Rally-Raid in April the place he positioned fourth. A transfer to Ford has lengthy been reported earlier than being confirmed Friday.
Led by Malcolm Wilson, M-Sport at present oversees Ford’s manufacturing facility WRC effort, and added a rally raid arm in 2022 as a part of an alliance with Neil Woolridge Motorsport. Two-time Dakar winner Nani Roma and 2023 South African Rally-Raid Champion Gareth Woolridge débuted the crew at that 12 months’s Baja España Aragón, respectively ending sixth and eleventh total, adopted by the W2RC’s Rallye du Maroc, the place Roma completed third.
The programme’s maiden Dakar in January was upended by each drivers retiring from Stage #7, relegating Roma to a forty-fourth and Woolridge to forty-sixth within the last order. Roma’s greatest stage end was a ninth on the penultimate day whereas Woolridge notched a seventh a leg later.
“I’m very excited by this new Dakar Rally undertaking, to return to working with Ford for the fourth time, and to return to M-Sport, to return to Malcolm who I do know very properly, it’s actually nice to be again,” mentioned Sainz. “My historical past with Ford goes all the best way again to ’87, and I believe I used to be Malcolm’s first driver, his first ever manufacturing facility driver, again within the day, and I’m very pleased with that. I’m actually excited to be driving the Raptor truck, and to method this huge problem with quite a lot of objectives. One is to assist Ford win the Dakar Rally.”
NWM is now not concerned with M-Sport, having designed their very own Ford Ranger T1+ for the SARRC that differs from M-Sport’s upcoming mannequin. However, Roma will rejoin the crew for 2025; he and Sainz comprise two of 4 Rangers that Ford intends to subject within the race. Different Fords planning to compete at Dakar 2025 within the top-level Final class embody Woolridge consumer Previous-Racing and Czech crew MING Racing Sports activities, the latter fielding a Ford F-150 EVO T1+.
“The size of our ambitions in off-road racing are unparalleled in Ford’s latest historical past and nothing is extra clear in that ambition than our problem to take the Ford Raptor to the legendary Dakar Rally,” added Ford Efficiency racing director Mark Rushbrook. “Taking up such an unlimited problem requires the very best engineers, designers, crew members, navigators and drivers, and in Nani Roma and Carlos Sainz Sr., we have now two of probably the most skilled and profitable drivers in Dakar historical past. The Ford Raptor is already displaying promising indicators in testing and having two of the very best drivers on the earth with us for the experience offers us confidence for the continued improvement of the truck.”
