Toyota Gazoo looking for 2020 Dakar title
A bucket list is something that differs from person to person, but for me, the activities, trips and experiences that populate my list mostly include cars and motorcycles.
I was fortunate to tick one of these items off my list recently when the team from Toyota South Africa invited me to Spain to watch a portion of the penultimate round of the World Rally Championship (WRC). The event also served as a platform for Toyota Gazoo Racing to announce its 2020 Dakar team to the world’s media.
World Rally Championship
Attending one of these events has been a dream of mine since I was a little boy watching my Grandfather’s Havoc VHS tapes, almost every day after school. In recent times, off-road racing and rally, in particular, has declined in popularity locally. The WRC is big business in Europe though, and even though there isn’t a WRC event locally, I still find it bizarre that this form of motorsport isn’t popular in South Africa.
The championship was incredibly tight heading into the Rally de Espana and luckily for my hosts, the Toyota Gazoo Racing WRT team was leading the driver’s championship thanks to the efforts of Ott Tanak and co-driver Martin Jarveoja. In the manufacturer’s standings, things were also close, with the Hyundai Shell Mobis World Rally Team leading the way heading into the event.
We were privileged to watch the prologue of the rally and to soak up the atmosphere created, by what is best described as a cultural melting pot, with many European nations filling up the venue. The number of spectators was just incredible both during the prologue and the opening ceremony and indeed, during the special stage that took place on the first day of the rally, even though the location was relatively remote.
After attending the Dakar press conference, which I will elaborate on later, we watched a few special stages before starting the long journey home. The rally continued on the Saturday and Sunday with Ott Tanak and co-driver Martin Jarveoja claiming the WRC driver and navigator’s championship title with one round to go. As for the manufacturer’s title, there are just 18 points between Hyundai and Toyota heading into the final round in Australia.
The Dakar announcement
The WRC event wasn’t the reason why my media colleagues and I travelled to Spain; we rather made the trek to witness the announcement of the Toyota Gazoo Racing team’s Dakar competitors for the 2020 event. The first big item on the agenda was the not-insignificant detail that the event would be shifting continents, no longer being held in South America, but rather in the Middle East. The event will begin on 5 January 2020, in the city of Jeddah located in Saudi Arabia. The rally moving its location results in the time zone benefiting not only us here in South Africa but most of Europe too. I am proud to announce that Autodealer will be there to provide you with coverage of the event in January.
The team announcement was rather exciting with reigning champions Nasser Al-Attiyah and navigator Mathieu Baumel again confirmed as Toyota drivers while our local man and former Dakar winner Giniel de Villiers retains his place but is now joined by new a navigator Alex Haro. Experienced competitors Bernhard Ten Brinke and navigator Tom Colsoul will be in the third car for Toyota Gazoo Racing.
The real headline-grabbing duo from the event, particularly considering that both are Spaniards and we were in Spain, was the team of Fernando Alonso and navigator Marc Coma, who will be attempting the Dakar for the first time.
Coma is no stranger to the event, having won it five times on a motorcycle; however, this will be his first stint as a navigator in a car at the event. Alonso, on the other hand, brings along a deeply impressive racing resume which includes two Formula 1 World Championships, two Le Mans 24 Hour victories, an FIA World Endurance Championship and a 24 Hours of Daytona win.
Despite the impressive credentials of the latter pair, it is expected that this will serve as a learning experience for Alonso and Coma, with the hopes of the Toyota Gazoo team again aimed more towards the Al-Attiyah and de Villiers teams respectively. Either way one looks at it, this is an incredibly competent team with its origins proudly entrenched right here in South Africa.
