New out of old. In 2025, Sébastien Loeb will take part in the Dakar in a Dacia, alongside Nasser Al-Attiyah. However, their prototype will be prepared by Prodrive, Loeb’s team since 2021. This car will be tested at the end of 2024 at the Rallye du Maroc.
If Sébastien Loeb has bet on the Romanian team, a subsidiary of Renault which has decided to engage in rally raids, it is to finally overcome the curse he has been experiencing for eight years now.
The nine-time WRC world rally champion between 2004 and 2012 has always won places of honor (2nd in 2017, 2022, 2023, 3rd in 2019 and 2024 therefore).
Far from his initial objective: “The Dakar is my main objective”, assured the Alsatian at dawn of departure from the Al-Ula bivouac. The “Poulidor of the Dakar”, “Loeb the Accursed”, so many nicknames which describe a situation which has lasted since his first participation.
For Sébastien Loeb, everything must be changed because Prodrive has obviously not met the Frenchman’s expectations: “We know that it is fragile on certain points, the team’s goal was to optimize it to already work on the next. It’s in progress. Today it is a high-performance car but one that does not tolerate mistakes,” he says.
For David Castera, boss of the Dakar, Prodrive is clearly responsible for Loeb’s setbacks: “The car has not been running all year, no development or sufficient investment to make it evolve, we see that they have the same breakdowns for two years, it’s not normal if we want to win the Dakar.”
“It’s a lack of seriousness on the part of the team that causes Sébastien to lose”
Castera goes even further: “It’s a lack of seriousness on the part of the team that causes Sébastien to lose. The team is not structured at all and has not given itself the means. The fact that Dacia comes behind will do a lot of good,” said the race director.
At Dacia, Sébastien Loeb will rub shoulders with his current teammate at Prodrive, the Qatari Nasser Al-Attiyah. Between them, the mayonnaise has not yet set. The two drivers had assured that they would help each other if one of them was out of the game. The opportunity presented itself, the Qatari assured that he would help Loeb but he threw in the towel while the Frenchman would have appreciated having a teammate to counter the strategy of the Audis who were escorting their champion.
“I had no chance against three Audis driving together, it was dead. It’s just a story of survival. Carlos (Sainz) is dying, he doesn’t care, he’s waiting for the next one. He was covered. Only me in there…” the Frenchman cursed Thursday evening, when his last hopes of overcoming the curse had vanished.
All this explains the repeated failures of Sébastien Loeb (49 years old) despite the fact that the Alsatian confirmed that he had become a formidable rally-raid driver with his 28 stage victories, including six in a row gleaned during last year, a record. This year he won five stages, compared to none for Sainz, the winner.
The 61-year-old Spaniard, who triumphed for the 4th time on the Dakar, also had words of comfort for the Frenchman: “You were unlucky. », he whispered in his ear while taking him in his arms on Friday in Yanbu on Friday.
An opinion that Loeb obviously does not share: “We often had mechanical problems which caused us to lose time, sometimes stupid things on my part, also navigation errors. And every year I got one of three. »
Unlike Nasser Al-Attiyah, who will be able to test his car in the rounds of the world rally-raid championship at his own expense, Sébastien Loeb does not currently have any races on his program before the Morocco rally-raid in October. The Alsatian, who nevertheless needs to race to accumulate experience with his co-driver, Fabian Lurquin, has so far not found a solution.
