Cristina Gutiérrez and Dacia: the duo set to take on the 2025 Dakar alongside Loeb and Al-Attiyah

The Burgos-born driver Cristina Gutiérrez is ready to face one of the biggest challenges of her sporting career: the Dakar 2025. In her ninth participation, she will be part of the new official team “The Dacia Sandriders”, sharing the garage with two rally legends, Sébastien Loeb and Nasser Al-Attiyah. Together, they will drive the Dacia Sandrider, a vehicle developed specifically to compete for outright victory and take the Dakar experience to another level.

“It’s a real dream come true and a great opportunity to learn from Seb and Nasser,” says Cristina, who highlights the good relationship within the team and the constant learning at every stage of preparation.

Question: How did your arrival at the “The Dacia Sandriders” team come about?

Answer: “It was while I was competing in Abu Dhabi in March 2023. We had a meeting with the Dacia team to talk about the project, and from the start I was very attracted to the idea of both making the jump to an official team and moving up to the main car category. I had no doubts about joining them: it’s the opportunity of my life. When they contacted me to sign, it was like a dream come true. Both the conversations and the meetings with the team were very straightforward, because the atmosphere inside is very familial and communication is very good. I feel very comfortable.”

Q. You are leaving the Challenger category to compete in Cars. What will surprise you most when you try the Dacia Sandrider for the first time?

A. “Being a bigger and heavier car, the inertia changes noticeably. In addition, the speed (limited by regulations) is higher, rising from 135 km/h to 170 km/h, which is a significant jump. The Dacia is also larger in dimensions, and at first that catches your attention with such curious things as the fact that until now Pablo (Moreno Huete, co-driver) and I were stuck together while racing, and now we no longer are. Precisely with him we have had to make changes, reducing the words we use during the race and modifying the vocabulary, because now everything happens faster and the notes also have to arrive sooner.

Despite the change in dimensions, the Dacia is a very compact car and you feel it very balanced on all types of terrain. Naturally, moving on from the Challenger, I have had to adapt my driving as we accumulate kilometres and learn. Although we still have a long way to go, if we take as a reference where we started and compare it with where we are now, I am very happy.”

Q. How has your preparation for the 2025 Dakar been?

A. “As the project had been defined for many months, from the very first moment we knew what our training programme for the 2025 Dakar would be. We began with various tests between July and September, and later we raced in the Rallye du Maroc, which is the usual preparation event for the Dakar, where the strongest drivers and teams take part.

During this time, since this is Dacia’s first participation in the Dakar, the goal has been to work on the durability of all the components so that the car arrives in Saudi Arabia with the best possible guarantees. For this reason, the intensity of the tests has been greater, with more kilometres per day than in other years. The fact that in Morocco Al-Attiyah achieved victory and Loeb finished second, and that I obtained good results day after day, shows that we are on the right track.

On the other hand, physically, I have also intensified my training, focusing on what I considered I needed to improve. In the end, everything counts in a race as demanding as the Dakar, and all of us who are part of the team must be at our very best.”

Q. In your first Dakars almost a decade ago you were fighting for class victories and for lower positions in the overall standings; in 2024 you were Challenger champion, and next year you aspire to everything… what would you say has been the turning point in your career?

A. “I would say it was when the Red Bull Junior Team signed me, a young talent programme that includes several drivers from around the world, with the main goal that they reach the top category one day. Before my arrival at the Red Bull Junior Team, I had no budget beyond doing the Dakar year after year, with no possibility of taking part in other competitions or training.

It is also important to be in the right place at the right time, and to achieve that you have to work hard. My contact with Red Bull came after taking part in the 2020 Rallye de Andalucía, where a team offered me a drive. As I did not have the necessary budget, at such a complicated time as COVID-19, I went to the bank, took out a loan and risked everything. I trusted that this opportunity could be key to my career; and in the end it was, because I met people at the Prodrive team and Loeb, who spoke about me to Red Bull, and we did the test that allowed me to join the Junior Team.”

Q. What does it mean for you to be in an official team alongside Sébastien Loeb and Nasser Al-Attiyah? Between Nasser and you, you add up six Dakar titles, and Sébastien adds no fewer than nine WRC championships along with many stage wins…

A. “If you had asked me a few years ago, I would have told you it would be impossible to reach this position. But sometimes reality surpasses any idea you have. For me it is a real dream and a great opportunity to learn from them. In the team there is a lot of communication between everyone, we talk a lot and we don’t hide information from anyone. That is, I have access both to their information and to their engineers, and I feel very fortunate because they are very open with me. If they have to give me advice, they give it to me. They are very good team-mates and I am very grateful for that.”

Q. You share a team with them and a car with Pablo Moreno Huete. How important is it to have a trusted co-driver in the Dakar?

A. “It is everything. The Dakar is a discipline where the driver represents 50% and the co-driver the other 50%. We compete on open stages that we don’t know, so navigation is key to avoid getting lost, because otherwise you would lose a lot of time. It is important that there is very good communication between the two of us, that we almost understand each other just by looking, without speaking. Also that we know how to reset in bad moments and carry on as if nothing had happened. Above all, what I like most is that Pablo and I were already friends before becoming co-driver and driver, and in fact he was my first head mechanic when I was 18. It’s like racing with my brother.”

Q. What catches your attention most about the 2025 Dakar route?

A. “Above all, the dynamics of the race. In the first week we will have the 48-hour stage on the second day, and on the fourth we will face the marathon stage. That first week is going to be difficult in terms of toughness and surviving with the cars without assistance. There will be many retirements. By contrast, the second half of the Dakar will be very different, because there will be no more marathon stages, and we will have days where the route is split for cars, trucks and motorcycles, so it will surely be much more strategic. We will see many drivers not wanting to win the stage so as not to open the road for the following day. Whoever manages the strategy best will be the one who finishes at the top.”

Q. What goal has Dacia set for the 2025 Dakar?

A. “I think the Dacia team arrives at the 2025 Dakar very strongly, considering the results achieved in Morocco, but we are also aware that it is our first year. We benefit from the fact that this structure already has experience, even though the car is completely new compared with last year. Obviously, we will go out to win, the team is clear about that, but we are also aware that there is a lot to learn.”

Q. And what goal has Cristina Gutiérrez set herself?

A. “It is difficult to set myself a goal without having competed before with this car in the Dakar. Seeing that in Morocco Pablo and I regularly finished among the top ten, and being aware that there will be more drivers in the Dakar than there, I would be very satisfied if in this first year we achieve a ‘top 10’ or ‘top 15’.”