We look back at Japanese giant’s rst grand prix era
Dakar raider
Dacia Sandrider going for glory in world’s toughest rally
Red Bull Powertrains
We visit the new factory as 2026 rule change prep continues
FORMULA 1
Rob Marshall discusses his impact on McLaren’s title run
WORLD RALLYCROSS
Battle of technologies as electric meets combustion
MANNIC MANIA
One of hillclimbing’s most spectacular contenders
Sandrider
It doesn’t have a glittering motorsport past, but Dacia has lofty ambitions to claim Dakar glory with this purpose-built T1+ machine
By DANIEL LLOYD
What does Dacia make you think of? To most, it is a manufacturer of low-cost, dependable, no-frills road cars. It hardly stirs any emotions when it comes to motorsport, or performance.
The tradition of this Romanian auto maker, recognised across Europe as part of the Renault group since 1999, is more about getting people from a to b cheaply than going anywhere fast. Consequently, its motorsport involvement has been sporadic at best. Competition versions of the 1310 and 1410 road cars were campaigned in Romania’s national rallying scene in the 1980s, while the single-make Dacia Logan Cup operated in ve countries during the late 2000s. Former Romanian prime minister, Victor Ponta, was one of the champions.
Victory in Rallye du Maroc came as a surprise to the Sandriders team, although it knows that is no guarantee of Dakar success
In 2012, four-time Formula 1 champion, Alain Prost, won the Andros Trophy ice race in a Dacia Lodgy, while an extreme Duster was built for the 2011 Pikes Peak International Hill Climb. The last few years have also seen a small German team become a Nürburgring 24 Hours fan favourite with a modi ed, 280bhp Logan, although there is very little Dacia in it; the engine comes from a Renault Megane RS.
In it to win it
In short, Dacia has a curious, albeit not especially prominent, motorsport heritage. However, that is set to change because, over a fortnight in January 2025, the brand will write a new chapter in its story by contesting the Dakar Rally in Saudi Arabia. Don’t be fooled, this isn’t a one-o special or a garagiste entry operating on a shoestring budget.
Dacia’s rally-raid project is a serious factory operation that intends to compete for outright glory at one of the world’s toughest enduros, going head to head with the likes of Ford, Toyota and Mini.
To do this, the company has developed a car speci cally for T1+, the Dakar’s premier class, in collaboration with experienced race and rally car manufacturer, Prodrive. It has also assembled a crack team of drivers: vetime Dakar winner, Nasser Al-Attiyah, nine-time FIA World Rally champion, Sébastien Loeb, and 2022 Extreme E champion, Cristina Gutiérrez. Dacia is going for gold, and the 4WD Sandrider is the machine it hopes will deliver.
An early taste of the Sandrider’s potential came at Rallye du Maroc, the nal round of the 2024 FIA World Rally-Raid Championship season in October. Dacia entered a trio of
Dacia’s rally-raid programme is a serious factory operation that intends to compete for outright glory at one of the world’s toughest enduros, going up against likes of Ford, Toyota and Mini
The trio of Sandriders undergoing work at the Prodrive factory in Banbury, UK. The car uses a tubular steel chassis built for strength
Experienced drivers are a must for any team wanting to win the Dakar, so Dacia’s recruitment of ve-time victor, Nasser Al-Attiyah, was a statement of intent
Mannic street preacher
It’s 4WD, uses a gas turbine to eradicate turbo lag and produces downforce when standing still. Racecar gets the lowdown on Nic Mann’s astonishing hillclimber
By MIKE BRESLIN
Even when standing still, this remarkable, self-built machine produces up to 70kg of downforce, all while sounding like a helicopter about to take off. Its 27.26s ascent of Gurston Down is a class record for the venue
Opinions differ as to when the aerodynamics of a racecar come into play. Some maintain the effect is almost negligible, and certainly not noticeable, at low speeds, while others insist that useful downforce can be generated even when a car is going slowly. Few, though, would claim a car can produce downforce standing still. Yet that’s exactly what Nic Mann’s extraordinary hillclimb creation, the Mannic Beattie, does, generating 70kg of downforce just sitting on the line.
We will return to how it pulls off this neat trick later, but first a little background, some of which might be familiar to long-time readers as this car was originally featured in 2010 (RE V20N7), although it’s been developed significantly in the 14 years since.
Mann started his hillclimb journey in a highly modified, turbocharged V8-powered Morris 1000, in which he used a progressive nitrous oxide system to counter the turbo lag. For cheap power, both that car and his current one employ the philosophy of
high-boost turbocharging, and lag is a well-known downside of this.
When nitrous was banned in British hillclimbing, Mann pursued another innovative anti-lag strategy but then sold the Morris in 1990 to buy a Mallock Mk18 rolling chassis. His intention was to use it as a base on which to build a car to contest the Sports Libre class.
However, the Mallock turned out to be not quite right for what Mann had in mind, so he ended up building his own steel spaceframe
Starting from zero
Honda was the world’s largest motorcycle manufacturer when, in 1961, company founder, Soichiro Honda, announced his intention to enter Formula 1. Four years later, the manufacturer scored its first victory
By WOUTER MELISSEN
The V12 engine… reached 210bhp at 11,800rpm on 13 February. That led Fujiya Maruno, a lead engine design engineer, to make an entry in his notebook that day that read, ‘The Old Man is happy’
WRX tracks typically feature 60 per cent asphalt and 40 per cent gravel, creating a unique set of conditions to engineer for
Rocky road
Charting the ‘battle of technologies’ between ICE and electric in WRX
By GEMMA HATTON
It has been a turbulent few years for the FIA World Rallycross Championship (WRX) to say the least. Politics and a pandemic delayed the series’ switch to electric cars and, just when the concept was gaining momentum, a paddock fire that destroyed one team’s equipment halted everything.
However, WRX rose from the ashes and reformed to become the first high-level series to race electric and combustion cars side by side (it had been done at the Dakar Rally two years prior). The result has produced a very relevant ‘battle of technologies’, set against the fast and furious backdrop of rallycross.
The idea of introducing electric cars to WRX was first sparked in 2016. By 2017, the commercial rights holder at the time, IMG, together with the FIA and several manufacturers, contrived a plan to have electric cars on the grid by 2020. These racers would have a single supply, carbon fibre
chassis from ORECA and a powertrain from WAE (now Fortescue Zero).
Unfortunately, costs quickly spiralled during the development phase, resulting in each car costing the teams over €1.5 million (approx. US$1.6m). This triggered an exodus of manufacturers and, when the deadline approached for teams to commit to electric, there was no one left.
Nevertheless, IMG had made a commitment to the FIA that electric cars would race in the 2020 WRX season and so, to honour that promise, the rights holder worked with Manfred Stohl’s engineering firm, STARD, to create Projekt E as a one-make electric series within the championship. Of course, 2020 was not the ideal year to introduce anything, as the Covid pandemic
effectively shut the world, and cancelled sporting events for months. The original 11-round WRX calendar was subsequently condensed to eight, and only started in late August. Projekt E was supposed to appear on the undercard at four of those rounds, but only ended up hitting the track in Sweden and Latvia with small grids of three and four cars respectively.
Project re-think
Despite pulling two rounds out of the bag, the future of Projekt E looked unclear to the FIA, so the governing body decided to launch a tender for a new fully electric WRX rule set. The idea behind this iteration was to utilise the existing RX1 chassis and modify it to accommodate an electric powertrain.
Alongside this tender process, IMG withdrew from being the commercial rights holder and WRC Promoter GmbH took ownership from 2021 onwards, with its newly formed Rallycross Promoter GmbH division. Battery manufacturer, Kreisel, won the tender and the electric conversion kits were scheduled to be delivered ahead of the 2021 season. However, ongoing delays caused by the pandemic, and other issues, meant the parts only became available in mid-2022. In the meantime, the championship stuck with the old RX1 ICE cars for the 2021 season, while the new RX1e electric cars raced for the first time in Norway on 13-14 August that year. It looked like World Rallycross had finally found the formula for introducing electric racecars in a successful and sustainable way.
Power play
When Red Bull announced it would build its own power units for 2026 some were sceptical but, with the help of Ford, the team is making it happen
By CHRISTIAN MENATH
Red Bull Powertrains is perhaps the most ambitious project in motorsport history, yet it is one born out of frustration
The Rindt Building is the flagship structure, but is just one of three halls that make up the Red Bull Powertrains facilty in Milton Keynes. The Ford partnership is evident as soon as you arrive