Ford Performance has provided the first look, albeit a limited one, at the Ford Raptor that will compete in the 2025 Dakar Rally.
The Ford Raptor, currently undergoing testing ahead of the rigorous endurance race, made its appearance during a driver lineup announcement. It rested, covered in spy camouflage, behind Nani Roma and Carlos Sainz Sr.
Roma and Sainz are two of the four drivers who will attempt to complete the 8,000-kilometer journey across all types of rough terrain. Ford Performance did not announce the other two drivers in the lineup.
“The scale of our ambitions in off-road racing are unparalleled in Ford’s recent history and nothing is more clear in that ambition than our challenge to take the Ford Raptor to the legendary Dakar rally,” said Mark Rushbrook, global director of Ford Performance Motorsport, in a statement.
“Taking on such an enormous challenge requires the best engineers, designers, team members, navigators, and drivers, and in Nani Roma and Carlos Sainz Sr, we have two of the most experienced and successful drivers in Dakar history. The Ford Raptor is already showing promising signs in testing and having two of the best drivers in the world with us for the ride gives us confidence for the continued development of the truck.”
Last season’s Dakar Rally tested competitors as they attempted to race from AlUla, Saudi Arabia, to Yanbu, Saudi Arabia. The Dakar Rally included stops at such locations as Al Henakiyah, Al Duwadimi, and Shubaytah.
Sainz seeks his fifth Dakar Rally title
Sainz has achieved a significant amount of success over nearly 40 years of racing. He won the World Rally Championship two times (1990, 1992) and scored 97 podium finishes.
Sainz won the Spanish Rally Championship in 1987-88. He won the Asia-Pacific Rally Championship in 1990. Sainz won the Race of Champions, a competition pitting the best motorsports drivers in the world against each other, in 1997.
Most recently, Sainz has celebrated four Dakar Rally titles in the car category. He won the endurance race in 2010, 2018, 2020, and 2024. He will now try to win his fifth Dakar Rally and his first with Ford Performance.
Like Sainz, Roma has success at the Dakar Rally. He won the 2004 Dakar Rally in the motorcycle category after beating 194 other entrants.
Roma then won the 2014 Dakar Rally in 2014 after switching to the car category.