Defender wins Dakar! Now what | PH Footnote
Hearty congratulations to Rokas Baciuska and Oriol Vidal as the D7X-R proves its worth in Saudi...
And so, at its first time of trying, Land Rover has won the 48th Dakar Rally. Or to put a finer point on it, Defender, with a little help from Prodrive and a lot from Rally-Raid specialist, Rokas Baciuška and co-driver Oriol Vidal, won the Stock class at a canter on Saturday, beating a brace of factory-supported Toyota Land Cruisers and a smattering of privateers. All credit to the factory and wider team. Extensive preparation, deep resources and grizzled experience count for much at Dakar, but you still need skill, remarkable tenacity and no little luck at crucial moments just to get you across the finish line. To do it ahead of your rivals - something the D7X-Rs did in a clean sweep - is an achievement Land Rover can be justly proud of.
Of course, the manufacturer, as befits its House of Brands strategy, would prefer you think of its victory purely in model-specific terms - hence the team’s name: Defender Rally. And the almost total absence of Land Rover branding, save for a familiar dinky badge on each car’s nose. Competing in the Dakar in the first place, and the Rally-Raid Championship beyond, is partly about emphasising the difference between ‘Defender’, and its ‘Range Rover’ and ‘Discovery’ stablemates.
Where one is about opulence and refinement, the other (assuming JLR doesn’t drastically reposition it) is about businesslike practicality and sensibleness. Defender, somewhere between the two, is meant to be about toughness and supreme off-road capability. Or, as Managing Director, Mark Cameron, prefers it - and despite freely acknowledging that the vast majority of owners rarely leave the safety of asphalt - “adventure”.
Certainly, there are precious few motorsport events that so adequately live up to the description as Dakar. And if people in general - even most car enthusiasts, if we’re honest - don’t know what exactly it entails in terms of stages or sheer distance, they likely know that to win it, even in a narrower sense, is no mean feat. “We wanted to show what a Defender can do,” Cameron explained when PH visited Saudi Arabia much earlier in the rally. Two weeks ago, it was apparently enough to turn up and do well against a much more experienced Toyota team. Now, nearly 5,000 miles later, it has something to crow about in the face of the Land Cruiser’s famed reputation for ruggedness.
That the D7X-R is recognisably a Defender is obviously key to this message. In the T1+ Ultimate class, Ford and Dacia vied for the chance to call themselves outright winners (Dacia, courtesy of Nasser Al Attiyah eventually triumphing), although the extent to which buyers associate its tubular-framed, carbon fibre-bodied, exotically-powered cars with a new Duster or Bigster is open to question. The Defenders, PH was reminded on the ground, came from the same Slovakian production line as any other. They have been modified, yes, in some ways significantly, yet fundamentally, and in most of the ways that really matter, the D7X-R is a Defender OCTA. Which, come Monday, you’re very welcome to buy.
In a perfect world, many customers would be compelled to do so by the sight of Baciuška, Stéphane Peterhansel (the Dakar record holder in terms of wins) and Sara Price (a champion motocross rider of wider internet fame) churning heroically through Saudi sandstorms. But for now, the broader impression made by the rally on the national consciousness is likely to be minimal - no great shock when even a motorsport event as grand and well-supported as the Le Mans 24hrs is poorly reported in the UK.
Does this matter? Well, it goes without saying that Land Rover (sorry, Defender) would like to maximise the amount of people paying attention. Much as Audi and Dacia and others have done previously, it diligently parachuted international media into the vast, constantly moving ‘bivouac’ base camp, and introduced them to what Dakar was all about from the comfort of a coffee-serving pod that would not look out of place at the Eastnor Estate. To call the multiple branded containers and tents of the Defender compound professional-looking among so many dusty privateers and money-poor bike teams is an understatement: it was like finding an airport McDonalds at a staging post for Desert Storm. Its 75-strong team wore Dakar like a Patagonia gilet.
Plainly though, it still needs help getting the word out. Its vision of an expanded Stock category, one including many more OEMs is a tried and tested one, and though Ford made no specific mention of it this week in its motorsport preview, the introduction of yet another fast Bronco means there is ample opportunity to expand its presence in Saudi Arabia. Given the sheer quantity of big-engine, big-ticket SUVs still on sale elsewhere, you’d imagine they aren’t the only firm taking an interest in the success of Defender. Making the class a genuine three- or four-horse race, assuming Toyota doesn’t take its defeat lying down, might yet do wonders for interest levels.
Ditto the arrival of more privateers. Cameron made no secret of his interest in engaging with customers who’d already enquired about buying their own D7X-R, a potential revenue stream that not only helps justify Land Rover’s investment, but again expands the field - assuming the manufacturer can negotiate a lift on the current price cap for selling a car to a private individual. Obviously that would be to the potential benefit of other factory-support teams, and you don’t have to squint to imagine a thriving scene thereafter, with many more recognisable competitors flanking those brave souls taking to the start line in Nissan Patrols.
Granted, none of this would remove the issue of spectating when it comes to Dakar. Any way you slice it, Saudi Arabia is a long way from motorsport fans in Europe (or North America or Japan), and like rallying in most traditional formats, a two-week endurance event does not necessarily lend itself to TV coverage. Which is a shame, because, not unlike WRC, it turns out the Dakar is brilliant to watch on the ground. While the bivouac might be shielded by police guards and checkpoints and wrist bands, the stage start that PH witnessed, seemingly chosen for a random location in the desert, was like Mad Max meets Goodwood paddock, a glorious unchecked mishmash of noise, people, goodwill and idling helicopters.
Spectating elsewhere on the stage was even better. Teams learn the specific route - essentially a long string of GPS waypoints - on the day, which makes finding a good place to watch something of a lottery, although the semi-chaotic aspect of the event is all part of the fun. Moreover, because driver and co-driver must find their own way between affirmative beeps, there are obviously no stewards or stands or tape to separate you from the action. Stand in the wrong place and you might experience that rarest of feelings in modern-day motorsport: genuine peril. And even if you don’t, you might very well see it among the competitors if they’re struggling to locate said waypoint - in less than half an hour, PH witnessed at least half a dozen near misses as cars and lorries circled back.
In short, you would almost certainly love it. And were it all taking place in the foothills of the Pyrenees or Atlas Mountains (i.e. somewhere even vaguely drivable), we might be talking about what a PH campsite could look like. But sadly it does not. And while it would not be hard to envisage Land Rover creating its own hospitality package for its most cherished customers - especially anyone coaxed into paying whatever enormous sum is eventually attached to a homologated D7X-R-lite special edition - that would cater only for the privileged few. The Dakar Rally, warts and all, deserves to be seen and celebrated much more broadly. If Defender, scheduled to compete till at least 2028, finds a way of achieving that, it really will have triumphed over impossible odds in the desert.
The only annoyance is the exclusively Defender branding, and treating the Land Rover brand as something that should be hidden away. I find that bizarre.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3zaPVO0Y-U
Good job LR.
I’m not a fan of the new Defender but I agree it’s a great job. Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday and all that.
How extensively modified were the cars? As simple as buckets, bashplates, rollcage and fire suppression?
I m not a fan of the new Defender but I agree it s a great job. Win on Sunday, Sell on Monday and all that.
How extensively modified were the cars? As simple as buckets, bashplates, rollcage and fire suppression?
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