The Toyota team is coming to Saudi Arabia for the 2024 Dakar Rally as defending champions. Nasser Al-Attiyah has won the marathon classic and the Rally Raid World Championship in the past two years. However, after seven years, Al-Attiyah said goodbye to Toyota and switched to Prodrive.
2024 represents a new beginning for Toyota. The factory-supported team from South Africa is starting with five driver pairings, including two rookie drivers in the top class. It is the largest line-up of drivers that the racing team has ever fielded for the Dakar.
On the one hand, there is a driver pairing with a lot of experience in Giniel de Villiers and co-driver Dennis Murphy. De Villiers is a master of consistency, having finished every Dakar since 2003. In 2009 he won with Volkswagen.
With his experience, de Villiers is also the pillar of further development. The new Toyota GR DKR Hilux EVO T1U has been changed in many details, which can also be clearly seen visually. Although the car has become 100 millimeters wider, it appears slimmer and more compact.
This is also because the cooling system has been revised. The wheel suspensions were also changed. Over the course of the 2023 season, around 30,000 kilometers were covered in addition to tests in the Rally Raid World Championship and the South African championship.
Toyota is also using a new biofuel for the first time. To this end, a partnership has been entered into with the Spanish oil company Repsol. Research has been going on for 18 months on the new fuel, which was developed exclusively for the Dakar Hilux.
Repsol supplies Toyota with fuel that consists of 70 percent renewable raw materials. This fuel was developed and produced in the technology laboratory in Madrid from renewable waste materials, such as used cooking oil.
Lucas Moraes on the podium as a rookie
One of the two newcomers to the factory-supported team is Lucas Moraes. Last year the Brazilian took part in his first Dakar in a Hilux fielded by Overdrive. Under the leadership of experienced co-driver Timo Gottschalk, Morais immediately finished third.
“Since then I have trained a lot in Brazil and have taken part in all the national races there are. I drove an SSV,” says Morais about his past months. “And then I was at Baja Aragon, where we took second place.”
“To be honest, until August I wasn’t sure if I would ever return to the Dakar again and then, after the Rally dos Sertoes, things started rolling with the Toyota team and Red Bull.”
However, Gottschalk will no longer be Moraes’ co-driver, as the German moved to Yazeed Al-Rajhi’s side. The duo drives a Hilux from the Overdrive team. Moraes’ new co-driver is Armand Monleon.
The second newcomer to Toyota is Seth Quintero and his German co-driver Dennis Zenz. The American has driven side-by-side prototypes in the T3 class for the past three years. Although the duo missed out on an overall win, they managed to impress.
Top talent Seth Quintero makes his debut in the top class
In the 2022 edition, Quintero/Zenz had a technical problem in stage 2. Apart from that they won all other days in the T3 class. Twelve stage wins meant a new record for a single edition of the Dakar.
Now Quintero/Zenz moved from the T3 class directly to the top class. At the age of just 21, Quintero takes over the cockpit from Al-Attiyah. “It’s nerve-wracking. I haven’t really driven many kilometers in the car yet,” says the American.
“The car has won many times, many rallies, and been driven by the best in the world. And now I’m driving it. I know that I’m expected to win. I expect that of myself too, but I need Time to learn.”
“I know that some people expect me to fail, others expect me to succeed. A lot of eyes are watching me and asking questions. I still have so much to prove. I also don’t want to give the impression that I’m just cruising. “
In addition, Moraes and Quintero will contest the full Rally Raid World Championship in 2024 after the Dakar. The other two Dakar crews alongside de Villiers will be racing in the South African championship for the rest of the year. These are Dakar rookie Saood Variawa with co-driver Francois Cazalet and Guy Botterill with Brett Cummings in the co-driver seat.