Some teams will be needing an identity tweak. New policy from the Amaury Sport Organization stipulates team names can no longer include the word “Dakar” since the Dakar Rally is a trademarked brand of the organizers.

Although the rally no longer goes through Senegal, any mention of Dakar in the context of the race is not permitted. One might be able to argue their usage of the word refers to the city, but that probably won’t fly in the ASO’s eyes either since teams doing that are likely competing in the Africa Eco Race instead.

Six teams who raced the 2025 Dakar have the word in their name. Three—Bastion Hotels Dakar Team, Coronel Dakar Team, and Magol Dakar Team—compete in Ultimate while Dakarspeed is a Truck outfit. AG Dakar School and Cajdašrot Dakar Team race bikes. Paul Spierings narrowly avoided being caught by the policy since his usual Dakar Team Spierings became Rebellion Spierings after partnering with Alexandre Pesci’s Rebellion Racing.

Craig and Carl Searles, who are making their Dakar debuts in 2026, already rebranded their program to comply with the rule by switching from “Searles2Dakar” to “S2D Race Team”. While the new moniker technically has a reference to the ‘Dakar’ in the original, it was vague enough to slide.

“Pretty much with immediate effect, we’ve had to change our name and everything linked to it, from the social accounts, to the website and merch, literally everything,” the brothers explained. “We’re allowed to keep the ‘S2D’ so we’re now ‘S2D Race Team’.”

Featured image credit: Coronel Dakar Team