On the heels of leading Hyundai to its first World Rally Championship drivers’ title, Christian Loriaux has made the switch to rally raid as the new Head of Development for Overdrive Racing. As part of his new duties, he will oversee R&D of the Toyota Hilux fielded by Overdrive and ally Toyota Gazoo Racing.

“We are very pleased to welcome Christian Loriaux to the team. He is such a famous engineer with an impressive history with Subaru, Ford, Bentley and Hyundai,” said Overdrive director Jean-Marc Fortin. “Honestly, this is an honor and a new motivation for us to build an even stronger R&D department. He will be heading this department, to fight with all the other teams and to develop new technology with Toyota Gazoo Racing and to look what we can achieve together in cross-country racing.”

Loriaux had been Hyundai WRT’s program manager for the last four years. Joining the team in mid-2021, he helped lead the development of the Hyundai i20 N Rally1 before its debut the following season. The i20 has finished runner-up in the manufacturers’ championship across all three years since introduction, but broke through on the drivers’ side in 2024 as Thierry Neuville won twice in Monte Carlo and Greece to clinch that title. Neuville holds the bulk of the i20’s victories with six while Ott Tänak contributed five and Esapekka Lappi added one.

The Belgian entered rallying as an engineer for Prodrive from 1991 to 2002, then took over as M-Sport’s technical director in 2002, the latter seeing him work with Ford’s WRC program as well as Bentley in GT3. Incidentally, Prodrive and M-Sport also compete in rally raid.

Although he was expected to continue with the South Korean outfit for 2025, Loriaux departed Hyundai instead in late December. Rumors about a permanent switch to rally raid quickly swirled; when Fortin was asked about the matter by Dominique Dricot on Saturday evening, two days before Toyota’s announcement, he played coy and joked that “I completely forgot about it. Maybe I should call him.”

His arrival reinforces Toyota, who is seeking a third consecutive World Rally-Raid Championship for manufacturers; it is the only marque to win that title since the W2RC’s inception. Overdrive, a fellow Belgian team, mainly fields the Hilux for privateers as opposed to TGR receiving factory backing from Toyota Motor Corporation. The former is bringing nine Hiluxes to the 2025 Dakar Rally: Yazeed Al-Rajhi, Rokas Baciuška, Isidre Esteve, Urvo Männama, Marcos Moraes, Toby Price, and Juan Cruz Yacopini.

“There is no doubt that both the official Toyota Gazoo Racing team and the many privateers that are part of the Toyota W2RC community will benefit from his knowledge and commitment,” added TGR W2RC head Andrea Carlucci.

Featured image credit: Fabien Dufour / Hyundai Motorsport GmbH