An all-Italian lineup in the truck category. Alongside the pilot Rachele Somaschini there will be Serena Rodella and Monica Buonamano: the 2026 Dakar will start on January 3
The desert dream of Italian Rachele Somaschini and her Ladies Dakar Team is about to begin. The Milanese driver, after this season’s commitment in the World Rally Championship (FIA Wrc2), will participate in her first Dakar with a truck in the Classic category for over 7,000 kilometers across the Saudi desert aboard the 1988 Mercedes-Benz Unimog 435 from Tecnosport Rally. Alongside Somaschini in this adventure there will be Serena Rodella, as second driver and mechanic, and Monica Buonamano, a navigator already expert in this very tough competition. Serena Rodella has a decade of off-road competitions under her belt, where she won 5 women’s national titles, from 2021 to 2025. Monica Buonamano’s CV includes, in addition to over thirty years of experience and victories in historic, endurance and cross-country rallies, participation in the last three editions of the Dakar Classic as a co-driver on cars and trucks.
the initiative
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The Ladies Dakar Team’s Dakar, starting next January 3 in Yambu, on the Red Sea, will be accompanied by Rachele Somaschini’s solidarity project #CorrerePerUnRespiro, founded in 2016, to combine the driver’s motorsport activity with raising awareness and raising funds for the Research Foundation’s research into cystic fibrosis, a genetic pathology from which Somaschini has been affected since birth. The charity initiative – which to date has raised over 520,000 euros in donations, is in fact also the basis of this extreme sporting adventure, destined to reach a wide audience at an international level. A personal challenge for the Milanese driver who, to better prepare for the extremely tough test in the desert, had to intensify her physical preparation and obtain her C license in record time to carry out, together with her crew, a few days of testing in Tunisia. Fundamental test to approach the basic dynamics of driving a heavy vehicle on sandy surfaces and navigation techniques CAP. In fact, in the race they will have to manage a truck weighing over 44 quintals (empty) with 130 HP, between dunes and sand tracks, for an average of around 600 km/day of special tests and transfers.
the words of Somaschini
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“Those who know me know that overcoming my limits is the driving force of my existence – said Somaschini before the start – and for me it is the only way that I feel is useful to fight the pathology that accompanies me and for which there is still no cure. However, with the Dakar Classic I am putting myself to the test in something that is truly far beyond the comfort zone. I will have to reconcile the rigid and exhausting race times with my therapies and with my sensitivity to high temperatures, all of this will constitute a challenge within the challenge but also a unique opportunity to bring the CorrerePerUnRespiro message to other continents and in contexts very different from mine”.
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