Nasser Al-Attiyah, the 53-year-old Qatari driver who is chasing his sixth victory (third consecutive!) in the 2024 edition of the Dakar Rally, which is set to start next Saturday in the Saudi Arabian desert, the host country of the off-road competition for the fifth time in five years, is convinced that Audi will withdraw from the race just three days after the “starting shot” because they do not have a strong enough machine to face such a tough challenge!
Al-Attiyah, who is debuting his own team in the 2024 Dakar (Nasser Racing) and has a new machine, the Prodrive Hunter, found a way to bridge the gap between his seven seasons with Toyota and his three-year contract with Dacia starting in 2025. He believes that the Audi RS Q2 e-tron E, despite benefiting from regulations that allowed a 15 kW increase in power due to the use of alternative energies, are fast but… “not very reliable,” which will compromise the team’s ambitions in this third consecutive participation in the race. “We saw it in Morocco and we saw it in Aragon!… They are very fast, yes, but they only last a few hundred kilometers and this competition is not about speed,” he argued.
Nasser relied on his seven years of experience with Toyota to support his opinion. “There hasn’t been an edition without problems in all the cars, except mine. The Dakar is different from other rallies, it has many traps. If we always drive at the limit, we won’t finish. That’s my secret! I position myself well on the track, adopt rhythms suitable for the terrain, and take care of the car’s integrity, protecting it from accidents and breakdowns,” he concluded. Meanwhile, Audi, which is competing with an electric model that has a thermal engine performing the role of range extender, is under pressure to win, which affects the clarity of Carlos Sainz, Mattias Ekstrom, and Stéphane Peterhansel, the drivers of the German team.
Al-Attiyah, also the reigning W2RC champion, is preparing for his 20th participation in the Dakar, which marks the “kick-off” of the 2024 Rally-Raid World Championship. In this 46th edition, until the 19th, the route covers 7891 km, including 4727 km against the clock. The Qatari driver, in the Nasser Racing Prodrive Hunter, is in the top car category (T1 Ultimate), which has 70 entries.
