If you’re a betting man, you might put money on someone like three-time reigning World Rally-Raid manufacturers’ champion Toyota winning the 2025 Dakar Rally. Those feeling confident about Nasser Al-Attiyah adding another or Sébastien Loeb finally breaking through might put it on Dacia. Of course, you can’t forget about the new Ford Raptor with Carlos Sainz.

Terence Marsh, the head of Red-Lined Motorsport, thinks Toyota is still the favorite but it could go either way. In his eyes, what decides the winner will be whoever’s engine and drivetrain can survive the two weeks.

“I think this Dakar is as wide open as it’s ever been,” Marsh opined. “You always look and say, ‘Where are the risks? Where do you have stability? Where do you have risks?’ Everybody brings up some sort of flags.”

Toyota is bringing 18 Hiluxes scattered across T1+ and T1.2, with Toyota Gazoo Racing and Overdrive Racing heavily comprising the former. The Hilux is a three-time Dakar winner courtesy of Al-Attiyah; while Al-Attiyah won the 2024 W2RC for Prodrive, Toyota remains the only brand to win the manufacturer’s title. Toyota is also perhaps the most ready for the race compared to Dacia, Ford, and Mini, mostly on the grounds of having an established car.

Yazeed Al-Rajhi, the points runner-up in 2023 and 2024, figures to lead the Toyota charge on his home soil. However, despite the armada in Saudi Arabia and the Hilux’s success, Toyota is not infallible.

“Do they have an outright winner? I’m not sure they have that, but they definitely have strength in numbers and strength in reliability,” he continued. “But their flag would be the legendary Mr. Glyn Hall (who designed the Hilux). He’s not here, that’s the first time in years or as long as they’ve been at Dakar. When someone of that magnitude and the experience is not here, you got to raise the flag that that leaves some sort of gap. How big is that gap? I don’t know. If the transition has been smooth and, then they should be in a really good position. If that transition hasn’t been effective. I suppose only Dakar will expose it over time will we know the answer to that.”

Dacia will have Al-Attiyah and Loeb, who showed pace in the Sandrider’s debut in Morocco which the former won. Cristina Gutiérrez, the 2024 Dakar Challenger winner, is also part of the team.

Prodrive, who oversees Dacia, previously fielded the Prodrive Hunter under the Bahrain Raid Xtreme banner for Loeb. Al-Attiyah contested much of the 2024 season in the Hunter before switching to Dacia for Morocco.

“From a driver’s perspective, you’d have to say they the favorites,” Marsh said. “From mechanical, couple of flags. It’s evolution. Is the car that good, that reliable? I would think so. I don’t see too many flags there because there is a lot of knowledge there.”

While Marsh feels Toyota and Dacia will be the top teams, he has reservations on Ford and Mini. The latter is fielding a new Mini JCW Rally Plus 3.0i, which uses a petrol engine rather than diesel. The new car had a solid debut at the Rallye du Maroc when Guillaume de Mévius finished third behind the Dacias, though Marsh admitted it has not been “tried and tested” enough for him to “put them in the mix.”

Likewise, Ford has the reigning winner in Sainz and star power like Mattias Ekström, Nani Roma, and Mitch Guthrie, but Marsh feels only Sainz will provide a challenge to the leaders. Prepared by M-Sport, the Ford Raptor is the only T1+ car with a non-turbo engine (instead using a V8) and Fox suspension.

“Yes, M-Sport were here last year and they would have had some learnings, but it’s a brand-new car, a new engine. The Dacia has also got a new engine. So again there’s some form of reliability question marks there.

“Sainz is the only one I can see where the car can be that competitive in year one. These guys would really have to surprise a lot of people because it’s an all-new car. M-Sport are very experienced and I have no doubt that the package overall would be good, but will it be reliable? Yeah, that remains to be seen.”

Vehicle reliability is often touted as a premium, even more than raw performance, when tackling a race as grueling as Dakar. The turbocharged engines that most T1+’s use will be pushed to their limit, and Marsh wrote he is “not convinced the drivetrains can sustain that amount of power for the duration of the Dakar unless of course you are replacing diffs and drive shafts every 2nd or 3rd stage which of course only the big factory teams can afford to do”. A differential costs roughly €35 thousand each, while a complete driveshaft set is €1.25 thousand.

Obviously, the aforementioned manufacturers—which Marsh called the “Big Four”—are factory teams who can cover the expenses. Still, nobody wants to waste time and effort making repairs after each stage. On the other hand, Red-Lined Motorsport is a fairly small company that, despite having a T1+ of its own, has little shot of competing for the win.

“It’s just something else to see the amount of money, the amount of people that these guys have got, and how much gets changed on a regular basis from a componentry perspective,” he stated. “It’s just another level. Those are all on another level on their own from a resource and money perspective. So yeah, it makes for an industry in Dakar. Let’s see how it how it plays out.

“As much as guys do a lot of testing in Morocco and they do a lot of kilometers, there is no other test like the ultimate test in the Dakar. No other event in the world exposes you to 14 days, 12 stages, six thousand kilometers of racing in these varied conditions. Only the Dakar will expose whether you have any weaknesses or cracks, so that we’ll see as it plays out.”

Marsh also expects the FIA’s torque meter to be a “big variable” in the race. New for the 2025 season, the torque meter is used to regulate the power of T1+ engines to ensure a level playing field. While it has yet to be used mid-race, the readings he’s been hearing thus far are not promising.

“The bottom line and the simplicity of it is they absolutely do no good of it,” Marsh said about the FIA. “That’s the reality. Contrary to what people want to tell you, they don’t get it right. They haven’t got it right for quite a long time now.

“They’ve introduced a new thing called the torque meter now that was supposed to do that. The first indications that we’ve got of the torque meter from inside the camp is it’s produced even bigger variables. That’s the next thing that has to play out is is how equal is the the actual performance of these cars.”

Featured image credit: Marcelo Maragni / Red Bull Content Pool