2024 Dakar Rally: 80 on Dakar Classic entry list

The fourth annual Dakar Classic, a side event to the main Dakar Rally that focuses on navigation and competing with rally vehicles built prior to 1999, will see a grid of eighty strong. Sixty-five of the entrants are in cars while the other fifteen race trucks.

Juan Morera and his wife Lidia Ruba hope to become the Classic’s first repeat winners as the reigning champions pilot a Porsche 959, switching from a Toyota Land Cruiser. The latter still has plenty of representation such as Carlos Santaolalla and Paolo Bedeschi, who joined Morera on the 2023 podium.

Barbora Holická and Lucie Engová, the latter the sister of ex-Formula One driver Tomáš Enge, will race a 1979 Citroën 2CV affectionately nicknamed “Duckar” for the rubber duck livery and Holická’s duck raising philanthropy. Nine-time Croatian Rally Champion Juraj Šebalj will take part in a Nissan Terrano.

Jorge Pérez Companc arrives at the Dakar with a decorated family pedigree. His father Gregorio was an Argentine entrepreneur and one of the country’s wealthiest businessmen, while his brothers Luis and Pablo have respectively raced in the WRC and sports cars; his son Ezequiel, a GT racer by trade, also has some off-road experience in Extreme E.

Due to the caveat that vehicles must be produced prior to the turn of the millennium, many hold various unusual stories that one will not get from a new car. While most used to contest the original Paris–Dakar Rally or other related rallies, others come from just as unique backgrounds. Ignacio Corcuera, for example, will pilot a Mercedes Unimog 424 that used to be a city-owned snowplow and firefighter training truck before Corcuera turned it into a supply transport truck to Ukraine and eventual rally competitor. Fellow truck racer Alexandre Lemeray‘s MAN L90 will be powered by hydrogen.

Janus van Kasteren Sr., whose son won the 2023 Dakar Rally in the truck category, will race the legendary DAF 3300 nicknamed “The Bull” for Team de Rooy, whose owner Jan de Rooy piloted it in the 1985 edition.

Brothers Maximilian and Laurence Loder are driving a Puch 280GE modelled after their father Josef’s G-Wagen that also raced in 1985. Unlike Josef’s car, the younger Loders’ was previously a four-door model that they converted to make it resemble the original vehicle.

Various competitors previously took part in the main Dakar Rally. Daniel Albero Puig raced twice on a bike in 2019 and 2020 before transitioning to a car for the Classic, while Rafael Lesmes moves from racing a T3 in 2023 to a Classic truck in 2024. Others, much like their vehicles, go further back to the days of the Paris–Dakar like Hervé Solandt, who raced the Dakar in 1985 and will pilot a Range Rover owned by ten-time Dakar starter Raoul Raymondis; his co-driver Brice Laborie-Brondino is the son of 1988 competitor Philippe Laborie.

Fabrizia Pons, who won four World Rally Championship races in the 1980s as the co-driver for Michèle Mouton before entering four Dakars with Jutta Kleinschmidt, makes her Dakar Classic début alongside former bike racer Luciano Carcheri.

The Classic is split into four speed groups of H1 (low average speed), H2 (moderate), H3 (intermediate; 10 to fifteen percent faster than average), and H4 (high speed; twenty-five to thirty-five percent faster), along with three periods of A (pre-1986), B (1986 to 1996), and C (1996 onwards).

The race commences alongside the main Dakar Rally on 5 January.

2024 Dakar Classic entry list

Cars

Trucks