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One of the automotive world’s toughest challenges is the famed Dakar Rally. Scheduled for January 5 to 19, 2024, the rally is to be held in Saudi Arabia.
Rally Is A Grueling Test
In a grueling feat for man and machine, the rally marks the expansion of Ford Performance into global off-road racing. The Dakar Rally starts an expansion that will lead through 2024 and beyond.
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The Dakar Rally will be the latest off-road racing venue for the automaker where Ford has worked on and developed its products. The automaker has raced and won from Le Mans to Monaco, Daytona to Bathurst, and Finke to Ensenada. And though it has participated in some of the off-road events that are out there, Ford has yet to take on one of the racing world’s most challenging, the Dakar Rally.
The first step in the multi-year plan to compete in the Dakar Rally is to finish and learn in collaboration with longtime partners M-Sport and Neil Woolridge Motorsport (NWM) for vehicle development, servicing, and event management.
Rally Participation A Long-Held Goal
"To lead the charge at one of the ultimate global off-road events – the Dakar Rally – has been a goal of ours,” said Mark Rushbrook, global direrector, Ford Performance Motorsports. “We cannot underestimate the enormity of the challenge ahead of us. We must finish and learn first with Ranger T1+ and partners like M-Sport and NWM, who bring their expertise to bear. Together, we can do amazing things in the sand dunes of the Arabian Peninsula.”
AM Radio Has A Place In Cars Despite Criticism Leading the charge into the 2024 Dakar Rally, taking place January 5-19 in Saudi Arabia, will be a purpose-built, high-performance Ford Ranger racing in the Rally Raid T1+ category. The joint Ford Performance, M-Sport, and NWM team has implemented a series of development phases through 2023. It continues testing with the Ranger T1+, based on the previous generation global Ranger, with a 3.5-liter EcoBoost engine.
Test races will include Spain’s Baja Espana Aragón and Morocco’s Rally du Maroc rallies in July and October, respectively, before tackling the Dakar Rally next year. “Our first time in Dakar will be a learning adventure that will help inform how we compete in the future,” said Rushbrook. “But as with all racing, we’re not just racing to win; we’re also racing to help build better products for our customers.”
More To Development Than Race
For the 2025 Dakar Rally, Ford Performance and M-Sport are developing an all-new, custom-built Ranger Raptor T1+ designed and built to Dakar’s T1+ class regulations. Ford Reveals Plan For Ranger Plug-in Hybrid “The Dakar Rally is truly among the pinnacle of global off-road racing events,” said Malcolm Wilson, M-Sport managing director. “We’ve achieved great success over the years with Ford in FIA WRC rally racing and can’t wait to apply this same level of focus, energy, and effort to competing with Ranger in Dakar.”
M-Sport is well regarded as a leading developer and campaigner of the M-Sport Ford Puma HybridRally1 in the FIA World Rally Championship and engine builder for the Mustang GT3 program. NWM has played a pivotal role since the infancy of the Rally-Raid Ranger, as the team developed and built units at its facility in Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal, specified to compete in complete Dakar T1+ regulations in the South African Rally-Raid Championship (SARRC) and around the world.
Marc Stern has been an automotive writer since 1971 when an otherwise normal news editor said, “You're our new car editor," and dumped about 27 pounds of auto stuff on my desk. I was in heaven as I have been a gearhead from my early days. As a teen, I spent many misspent hours hanging out at gas stations (a big thing in my youth) and working on cars. From there on, it was a straight line to my first column for the paper "You Auto Know," an enterprise I handled faithfully for 32 years. Only a few people know that I also handled computer documentation for most of my earnings while writing YAN. My best writing, though, was always in cars. My work has appeared in Popular Mechanics, Mechanix Illustrated, AutoWeek, SuperStock, Trailer Life, Old Cars Weekly, Special Interest Autos, etc. You can follow me on: Twitter or
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