Sébastien Loeb: “It’s very open”

January 2 ^nd 2026 - 11:08 [GMT + 3]

Sébastien Loeb, who won the final leg in the W2RC last October and achieved two podium finishes during the previous races in the championship, will begin the Dakar with an unprecedented level of consistency on paper. However, the Frenchman has a totally different interpretation of these statistics…

“The car is pretty good this year. We’ve got more experience with the team, the car and the technical aspects compared to last year, which we started without too much confidence because there were lots of small details that weren’t necessarily sorted out and it was a new car. In general, on the recent races, the car has been handling well. That’s one thing, but on the other hand, the Dakar is still the Dakar and we know that it’s complicated to put everything together and have it all work out perfectly over two weeks. I felt good behind the wheel in recent races, we felt confident and everything went well. I managed to drive at the right pace and chose the right moments to attack. That said, even if we won in Morocco, it was by a whisker – there was hardly anything in it. Obviously, we won but it also shows that our competitors are hot on our heels. On the Dakar, you might often think that you need to know just when to choose the right moment to attack but by going on all-out attack in Morocco, we all ended up with almost the same times, which means that it’s very open”.