João Ferreira: "Everyone is a contender"

January 1 ^st 2026 - 11:41 [GMT + 3]

The young Portuguese driver, 26, has got his hands on a new vehicle since finishing eighth last year. He will be tackling this edition in a Toyota Hilux, fuelling his ambitions in his fourth Dakar.

"Every year, every race you do, you get more and more mature, especially when you're a young driver like me, so you mature every race, and you get to understand more the race, to be calmer in the bad moments, and for sure that helps in a very long race like Dakar.

It's super exciting, you know, because in the past we had Carlos, Nasser, and Stéphane, one or two drivers more, but you know, one of these three will win Dakar. And now you have 10, 15 drivers that you say, okay, they can fight for the stages, and everything goes okay, they can fight for the top 5, top 3, or even win Dakar.

So the competition is very, very high, you know, a lot of new manufacturers as well, but I like this, you know, the more drivers and manufacturers we have in our sport, our sport grows. I mean, before the race starts, everyone is a contender, you know, you cannot say this guy will win Dakar or not, especially in Dakar, it's such a difficult race. We are getting faster and faster and faster, the cars as well, as we saw in Morocco, we were on the pace of the top guys, not just me, all the other young drivers. So yeah, I think it will be a very nice competition. I want to win. For me, I want to win, and after that for my teammates finish second and third, you know, but this will be ideal. But everyone has their own bet and their own target."