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Dakar 2024:Isidre Esteve surprises through the streets of Barcelona with his Dakar Rally car.
- The Hilux T1+ of the Repsol Toyota Rally Team has been driving around the most representative places, before embarking next week with the rest of the participants from Barcelona to Saudi Arabia.
- The Spanish team, powered by Repsol's renewable fuel, faces the toughest race in the world with optimism, after a positive season of preparation.
- The driver from Lleida and his co-driver Txema Villalobos are convinced they can fight for the top 20, after being faster than ever in the race and demonstrating their spirit of self-improvement in an inclusive sport like rally-raid.
- "Getting into the top 20 of the Dakar is one of the team's objectives. It would be a great result and we are ready to achieve it."
The Repsol Toyota Rally Team has started this Wednesday the countdown to the Dakar Rally 2024, and has done so in a special way, circulating through the streets and the most emblematic points of Barcelona with the Toyota Hilux T1+ that Isidre Esteve and Txema Villalobos will drive in the most extreme adventure of motorsport. In this way, the Spanish team wanted to warm up the atmosphere a week and a half before the European participants of the Dakar embark - as a novelty this year - their vehicles from the Catalan capital to go to Saudi Arabia, where the competition will start on January 5th.
For the driver from Oliana (Lleida), it will be his 19th participation, the ninth in a car, and with the same ambition and enthusiasm as always. With the unwavering support of Repsol, MGS Seguros, TOYOTA GAZOO Racing Spain and KH-7, Esteve is convinced that he has made a qualitative leap that will allow him to fight for the top 20 in the toughest rally-raid in the world. If he achieves this, he would surpass his previous best result in a car on the Dakar, the 21st position he achieved in 2018 and 2019, and the 34th place overall (24th among cars in the T1 category) in 2023.
"Getting into the top 20 of the Dakar is one of the team's objectives. It's true that there are many drivers and many cars with very similar performance quality, and that the top ten are professional factory teams. Everyone wants to do well and everyone is improving, but so are we. It would be a great result and we are ready to achieve it", says the driver from Oliana (Lleida).
The optimism of the Repsol Toyota Rally Team is supported by the positive preparation season carried out in the second half of 2023. The team hit the ground running last July, at the Baja Aragon, where it showed itself to be faster and with more pace than ever on track. Then, in October, Esteve and Villalobos confirmed the good feelings at the Morocco Rally, where they continued to make progress. After a year of experience with the competitive Toyota Hilux T1+, the team has made great strides in fine-tuning the vehicle.
"On the one hand, we have improved my position inside the car, which allows me to drive more comfortably. On the other hand, we have found a suspension set-up that I like better, which makes the car more responsive and gives me more confidence, even if it is more suitable for the track than for open desert as it is stiffer. In this sense, we now have much clearer ideas", he explains.
However, there is an even more important aspect for him, such as the configuration of the controls adapted by Guidosimplex on the Toyota's steering wheel. The challenge for the driver from Lleida in the Dakar is to compete on equal terms with the best, with a vehicle as competitive as those of the other top drivers, but with one caveat: Esteve has to drive using only his hands to operate the brake and accelerator, located on the steering wheel, while controlling the steering, gearshift, and handbrake at the same time. This makes his driving a real feat and entails an enormous physical effort that is put to the test stage after stage, another example of his tenacity and enormous capacity for self-improvement.
"One of the most delicate points for me is the sensitivity of the braking system. We are constantly working with the mechanics to improve this section. And we have finally found a compromise that, in addition to braking when necessary, allows me to use the brake to steer the car, to position it", explains the Repsol Toyota Rally Team driver. That helps him to compete without barriers in a fully inclusive sport such as off-road competitions.
On the other hand, the previous competitions and tests carried out during 2023 have confirmed the good work done by Repsol in the formulation of lubricants and renewable fuel used from day one in the Toyota Hilux T1+. The demanding conditions of rally-raid are a very tough test bench for its development and to validate its performance. Especially for a product as innovative and advanced as Repsol's renewable fuel, 70% of which is produced from organic waste.
"We have not stopped working on the development of Repsol's new renewable fuel. We and our engineers at Toyota are very pleased because it gives us exceptional performance. In addition, for us, using a renewable fuel is a responsibility to contribute to reducing emissions, a commitment from all of us that we are proud of," he says.
Dakar 2024 will be the 46th edition of the legendary race, the fifth to be held in Saudi Arabia. Participants will embark their vehicles at the port of Barcelona between November 30 and December 2, and the race will start on January 5 from the millenary city of Al-Ula, the site of the prologue stage and the start of the first of the twelve stages of the competition. After almost 5,000 timed kilometers and around 8,000 kilometers in total, the Dakar will finish on January 19 in Yanbu, on the shores of the Red Sea.
The route of the special stages will be 60% new. A new feature this year will be a marathon stage in the Empty Quarter desert, which will have a new format called "48-hour time trial". It will be stage 6, on January 11 and 12, before the rest day. Instead of a single bivouac for the entire caravan, there will be six different bivouacs. When the clock strikes 4 p.m., the riders will be obliged to stop at the next bivouac, as if it were a curfew, before resuming the stage at 7 a.m. the following day. Thus, no partial classification will be available, but the result will be the overall result of "48 hours", after nearly 600 kilometers of special stage.
"The first part of the race will be very interesting, because, with the new format, the passage through the Empty Quarter will be much more complete, after last year's contact. The organization always brings new things, so I expect a very nice race that will allow us to really see the competitiveness of the Toyota Hilux T1+. Of course, I hope it doesn't rain, so that the routes are not marked and navigation is more important", concludes Isidre Esteve.
Automatic translation of the Spanish version
Source: Repsol Toyota Rally Team
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