Ahead of the official race, Nasser Al-Attiyah and Carlos Sainz Sr take a dig at each other post the Qatari’s comment on Team Audi. Al-Attiyah, when interviewed by Motorsport.com about Team Audi, had a blunt answer, saying “Audi? I give them just three days and they will go home, you saw it in Morocco and Aragon after a hundred kilometres.”
When asked about this, Carlos Sainz Sr spoke to the media saying, “I’d like to see it [Audi] up there, fighting from the first moment with the front, and that’s easy to understand at this stage when the race hasn’t even started, you’re preparing all year to look for that scenario, where you fight until the end to win it.”
In the 2023 Dakar Rally and the events that followed, Audi faced several reliability problems, while in the 2023 edition of the Dakar Rally, only one e-Tron finished the rally in the hands of Mattias Ekstrom, while the other two cars, piloted by Dakar legend Stephane Peterhansel and WRC legend Carlos Sainz Sr, were forced to retire in stage 7 and stage 10 respectively.
For this Dakar, Audi has completely revamped the RS Q e-Tron, from the software to the chassis, including the bodywork and transmission. In the process, the e-Tron has also shed a significant amount of weight with every component possible. One of the primary issues faced by Audi last year was stones getting jammed between the brake callipers and struts, which has been rectified, along with other aspects of the vehicle.
This year, with Audi looking to take the victory, Nasser Al-Attiyah will have his hands full to defend the championship, as this will be his first Dakar outing with Prodrive. The Qatari will not just have Audi breathing down his neck, but Toyota and his own teammate, nine-time WRC winner Sébastien Loeb, as well, aiming for his first Dakar win.