With M-Sport’s rally raid division set to field the new Ford Raptor at the 2025 Dakar Rally, customer Jourdan Serderidis wants a shot at it in the near future. In an interview with DirtFish, Serderidis revealed he would like to race the Dakar as early as 2026 in the Raptor.

Serderidis is a rally privateer who competes in the Greek and Belgian national series as well as the World Rally Championship and WRC2. He has used Fords from M-Sport since 2018, though being a customer means he cannot earn points for the team. Doing a four-race WRC schedule this past year, his best finish was ninth at Safari Rally Kenya.

Speaking with DirtFish, he revealed his main goal is to try to win the Greek title after coming up short twice, as well as doing a four-race WRC calendar. After that, he continued, “I will switch to the rally-raid, I think. So I will prepare myself with one baja in Spain, then I do Portugal, Morocco and I want to do Dakar in 2026.”

He did not specify what those three pre-Dakar races are since each country hosts multiple cross-country rallies. For example, Spain has the the Baja TT Dehesa Extremadura and Baja Aragón on the FIA Baja Cups, while Portugal is home to the Baja Portalegre 500 and Baja TT Sharish Gin in addition to their respective national championships. Both Iberian countries also jointly hold the World Rally-Raid Championship’s BP Ultimate Rally-Raid, while Morocco is the site of the W2RC season-ending Rallye du Maroc.

The Rallye du Maroc is often used by teams heading to Dakar as a final dress rehearsal and is likely one of the rounds he has in mind. Baja Aragón is also presumably the Spanish leg in question as one of the largest bajas in Europe.

Serderidis explained he enjoys longer rallies like the ten-day East African Safari Classic Rally, and the crossover between rally and rally raid greatly appeals to him. While rally will still be his main focus in 2025, he told DirtFish he has already started physical training to lose weight for the race.

“The fast guys (in rally raid) are coming from the rally as well,” he continued. “I want to try it and I want to do it once at least, this is the thing that I want to do.”

M-Sport is fielding a quartet of Ford Raptors in the 2025 Dakar Rally for defending winner Carlos Sainz, Mattias Ekström, Mitch Guthrie, and Nani Roma. The Raptor won in its competition debut at the Hungarian Baja in August with Roma, then Sainz set the fastest time among all cars in the fourth stage of the Rallye du Maroc despite not being classified since the Raptor had not been FIA-homologated at the time.

Featured image credit: Jaanus Ree / Red Bull Content Pool