“Really excited to have my brother as navigator”
CREW FACTS
A.B-L.
- Andi’s whole family loves adventure and doing big trips together, for example riding motorcycles across South America.
- His dad used to go and support Andi’s brother Nicolas when he was racing the Dakar on bikes and then in SSVs.
- When the Dakar Classic was launched Andi and Nicolas’ dad, a regular participant in classic car regularity rallies, was quick to sign up.
- The following year Andi decided to enter alongside his father, aboard a pair of Mitsubishi Pajeros. Andi had a great rally up until the last stage, when he rolled the car and damaged the radiator. That didn’t help his ranking but he still made it onto the finish podium to get his medal.
- Last year father and son decided to have a go at the Africa Eco Race classic rally, but for 2025 will return to the Dakar in Saudi Arabia.
N.B-L
- Nicolas is no Dakar newbie, with 5 entries in the bike class and 3 in SSVs. And he knows how to finish a Dakar too, having got to the end of no less 7 out of his 8 participations.
- And he’s fast. In the bike category his best result was 38th, while in SSVs his highest placing was 15th. Like many bike racers Nicolas got to ‘the age where a man needs a cage’. But also like many bike racers he likes his adrenaline in large doses. Something the SSV class didn’t deliver for him. As he put it: ‘the cost / emotion equation didn’t add up for me.’
- Nicolas knows what he likes and likes what he knows. He’s done almost all his Dakar with the support of ex-factory rider and FIM rally raid world champion David Casteu. When Nicolas’s dad and brother decided to enter the Dakar Classic, Nicolas naturally steered them in the direction of his mentor.
2025 AMBITIONS
A.B-L: “I really enjoyed my first Dakar Classic back in 2023. I’d never done a regularity rally before but I was bitten by the bug and particularly impressed by the beauty of the Saudi Arabian desert. Then last year, with my father, we decided to enter the Africa Eco Race because we were curious to see the Africa of the original Dakar. Now that we’ve scratched that itch, we’ve come back to the Dakar Classic for 2025. I’m really excited to have my brother as co-driver. It will be fun to be in the car together and he’s a very experienced navigator, even if this will be his first regularity rally. In terms of performance, I’d like to finish in a respectable position but I won’t be aiming for a podium or anything like that. Those guys have so much experience and skills and take the whole thing really seriously. I’d rather take a slightly more relaxed approach which isn’t really compatible with a podium finish!”
N.B-L: “My brother was struggling to find a suitable navigator for his second attempt at the Dakar Classic so I didn’t take a lot of persuasion to fill the vacancy. When I was racing the Dakar on a bike my main strength was navigation. Even when I was racing an SSV I couldn’t help get ‘involved’ in the road book. So logically I shouldn’t be too disastrous navigating on a regularity rally. However, this will be my first time navigating as a co-driver, so that will be new experience for me, plus I’ve never taken part in a regularity rally before so I need to get up to speed with the specifies of the discipline. This will be my brother’s third regularity rally raid. He won a stage on the Africa Eco race so I think he’ll be taking the 2025 edition of the Dakar Classic reasonably seriously and obviously I don’t want to let him down. I don’t think there’ll be too much filial tension. We work together regularly and we always get on well, so I don’t think we’ll have any problems spending a few days together in a car. I’ll just have to fight the temptation to grab the steering wheel off him!”
