Sébastien Loeb before the start of the Rally of Morocco: “We just have one problem to solve”

New polo shirt in the colours of the Dacia team, confident approach in the Marrakech stadium which hosts the first bivouac of the Rally from Morocco, a few jokes slipped to his team and informal discussions between competitors: Sébastien Loeb is definitely in a good mood before the start of the event

The Alsatian arrives in Morocco without any pressure linked to the result, since he plays no role in the World Rally-Raid Championship (W2RC), unlike his teammate Nasser Al-Attiyah (see below). Moreover, the Frenchman announces it from the outset: don't wait to see him steal the show in this competition!

"There is no specific outcome target," he confided to the journalists present including AUTOhebdo this Saturday, October 5, before making a well-aimed joke about his tumultuous history with Morocco. “If I beat my second best result from here… Yeah, I have to be in the top 44. Because I finished second once, 44th once, 53rd once, 56th once. So, if I finish 43rd, I would get the second best result of my career in Morocco,” jokes the man who had taken his first steps in the discipline on this choice terrain in October 2015.

 

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More seriously, Sébastien Loeb will try to check the behavior of his new 4x4, the Dacia Sandrider, developed with the English company Prodrive as was already the case with the BRX Hunter between 2021 and 2023.

"It's always exciting to discover a new car in a race, there's the suspense of seeing where you're going to be and if the car will work. Afterwards, we know that in rally-raid reliability is important so the beginnings are never easy."

Indeed, the Rallye du Maroc will be the first competitive outing of the Dacia Sandrider. It is therefore impossible to anticipate anything in terms of raw results, as rally-raid is an inexact science.

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"This is the first time we're going to measure ourselves against Toyota, Ford and Mini, with this Dacia, continues Loeb. So, I'm really looking forward to seeing what it's going to give in terms of performance. The feeling with the car is pretty good, that's already something. And then, the goal is to prepare for the Dakar. (January 3-17, 2025). In an ideal world, having a good Rally of Morocco would reassure us for Dakar.

What would be even more ideal would be to give a helping hand to his teammate Nasser Al-Attiyah so that the Qatari can win a third consecutive title, on October 11th at the final finish in the Moroccan dunes. Al-Attiyah has a 15-point lead over Yazeed Al-Rajhi (Toyota Overdrive), but the Saudi has the advantage of knowing his Hilux 4x4 by heart, having been in use for several years. "It is also our role in this event to help Nasser", confirms Loeb.

However, not everything is rosy for Dacia. The tests carried out in July, under a scorching heatwave (over 70 degrees recorded in the passenger compartment), revealed cooling problems with the vehicle. Enough to cast doubt on the reliability of the car in this Rally of Morocco?

"We discovered a few small teething problems, which is quite normal when you release a new car. We just have one main problem to solve, which is the heating of the car. It's a car that we cool almost exclusively with the fan. And there are fan problems, precisely. This really bothered us on the last private runs. There is a solution that, a priori, has been found. No one is very confident, but we are hopeful that it will work. We will talk about it again on Monday evening," at the end of the first stage.

ALSO READ > IN PICTURES – The new Dacia Sandrider and Ford Raptor hit the track in Morocco

As Sébastien Loeb is of a positive mindset, he finally wants to draw up a list of the satisfactory points of his work tool. "In terms of chassis and visibility, it's better than the Hunter. The car is very agile. We don't overheat our rear tires anymore. For the moment, we don't have many punctures!" So many aspects that had made people grind their teeth and lose victories during the Hunter's time.