Rafael Lesmes and Tabatha Romón are pleased with how their Toyota Land Cruiser HDJ80, nicknamed “The Pink Desert Fox”, has fared so far in competition. After finishing fourth in class at the Baja Aragón in July, the Fox scored a fifth overall in its first taste of desert rallies at the RallyClassics Africa. The Dakar por la Vida team hopes to carry that momentum into the 2026 Dakar Classic.

In January, Lesmes won the Dakar Classic’s Truck class for the second year in a row and finished ninth outright. Both starts came in a Mercedes-Benz 1844 AK nicknamed the “Pink Elephant”, marking a shift from when he did the Dakar Rally in a side-by-side.

For 2026, Dakar por la Vida switched to the Land Cruiser with the goal of competing for the Classic’s overall. Land Cruisers have won the Classic overall every year since its inception save for the inaugural edition in 2021.

Being a smaller and more agile vehicle than the truck, the Land Cruiser was nicknamed the “Pink Desert Fox”. The color stems from the team’s off-track mission to raise funding and awareness for breast cancer research.

The Fox debuted at the Baja Aragón, held in its native Spain, where Lesmes and Romón placed fourth in the Regularity class. Two months later, they were off to Morocco since the desert environment for the RallyClassics Africa; like the Rallye du Maroc for the Dakar Rally, RallyClassics is used as a dress rehearsal for the Dakar Classic since the Moroccan desert is similar to Saudi Arabia’s terrain.

RallyClassics started with a mixed bag as Lesmes finished sixth in Stage 1 but was hampered by a roadbook tablet glitch, costing them a few minutes as Romón tried to reset it. The technical issues continued into the next two days, when their telemetry was recording them as hitting each waypoint much later than they actually were, but things improved with a second in SS4.

They final day ended with a fifth to secure a top five.

“We finished and are feeling good after five days of racing,” said Lesemes. “We finished fifth overall and more importantly, we’ve been adapting to this vehicle that was totally unknown to us. The training went well and now the next race will be the Dakar 2026.”

Featured image credit: Dakar por la Vida