“I want to go out and try to be the best every single day”

Since turning up to his first Dakar as a fresh-faced teenager in 2021, Seth Quintero has taken the world of rally-raid by storm. One of the most talented drivers of the emerging generation, the 21-year-old began racing lightweight prototypes at the age of 10 and bagged his first championship win at 11, which quickly put him on Red Bull’s radar. With their support, he climbed the ranks and continued to break records for fun, becoming the youngest driver to win a host of American offroad events and conquering the Best in the Desert series in 2019. At just 18, he made his Dakar debut alongside German co-driver Dennis Zenz. Seth and Dennis have done three seasons together in the T3 class, enjoying all manner of highs and lows. They’ve won stages galore at the Dakar, setting a new all-time record for a single edition with a mind-boggling 12 in 2022. But for a long time, overall success eluded them, with gearbox issues putting them out of contention at Dakar 2021, and broken differentials ruining their hopes on an otherwise flawless run in 2022. An errant wheel on Stage 4 of Dakar 2023 also cost them precious time, but Seth and Dennis did recover to finish second behind Austin Jones. Slowly but surely, they have started putting the pieces of the puzzle together. They took their first overall win at the Rallye du Maroc 2022, then managed to snatch victory in the 2023 World Rally-Raid Championship, despite issues in Mexico and Argentina. The dust had barely settled on that achievement when the big announcement was made: Seth and Dennis would be joining the Toyota Gazoo Racing team for Dakar 2024, stepping up into the Ultimate class. Remarkable as it sounds, a 21-year-old from San Marcos has thus been handed the keys to the Toyota GR DKR Hilux T1+, the formidable machine Nasser Al Attiyah drove to Dakar victory in 2022 and 2023. Such a move will clearly thrust the young Red Bull duo into the spotlight as they battle with rally-raid legends such as Stephane Peterhansel, Carlos Sainz, Sebastien Loeb and of course Al Attiyah himself. Seth already had a chance to test himself against the Qatari at the Dubai International Baja, showing impressive pace but suffering an unfortunate rear differential problem on the final stage. Despite his inexperience at this level, the young American will be carrying weighty expectations on his shoulders at Dakar 2024.

S.Q.: “I guess I'm feeling a lot of things. I”m excited, first of all. It's also nerve-wracking, because it's my first year in T1 and I haven't really done many miles in the car. It has won many times, many rallies, been driven by the best in the world. And now I'm driving it. I know I'm expected to win. I expect that from myself, but I need time to learn. We saw in Dubai that the speed is there, but now we just have to do it for 14 days straight! Definitely feeling a little bit anxious. You want to beat everyone else, but to be the best in the world every time you step in a car is not the easiest job. I know there's people expecting me to fail, others expecting me to succeed. There are a lot of eyes watching and questioning. I would rather go out there and try to win every single day. I have so much to prove, and I don't want to seem like I'm cruising. Dennis and I proved you can work your way through the ranks to the highest level of offroad racing. We had an amazing run in the T3s but also one of the unluckiest. Finally, we saw it fall our way for once. It was nice to end that way and step away as world champions. I crossed the finish line knowing we were champions, and I was just kind of numb and raw. I think I went to bed at about 8pm that night, and got my best night's sleep ever! I'm sure I'll regret that later, not celebrating. But when you work so hard for something and it finally happens, you don't need to exploit it, because you're so proud of yourself."

D.Z.: “When I was seven I did karting, because my parents were involved in motorsport. I did that until I was 13, then jumped into the co-driver's seat, and found that I really enjoyed it and wanted to improve. I was able to start racing officially at 16. I did that for many years, until I got a call from Red Bull, asking if I wanted to jump into rally-raid. Two days later I was at the airport in France meeting Seth on the way to the Andalucia Rally. We had no clue about the car, the navigation, the different systems. Everything was new for us. I'll never forget the first day of Dakar 2021, when I'd never seen a proper navigation roadbook. We were both kind of clueless, but somehow we made it to the finish of the first day, and then we ended up winning six stages. It's only been three years since we started this journey and we've had lots of experiences, good and bad. Winning the championship was unexpected because we didn't have the best year, to be honest. It was up and down at every race, but winning the title was a kind of payoff for struggling with bad luck for the past three years.
Jumping into the big car is a dream come true. I'll never forget being 10 years old and watching the WRC in Germany, with guys like Carlos Sainz. I was a little kid praying I'd get their autographs, and now I'm going to be fighting on the same level as them in the W2RC. It's crazy, you can't imagine. We want to prove that we're fast, that we belong in the sport, but it's not the expectation to go to Dakar and kick everybody's ass! If we stay clean, we can get a good result, but we're not speaking about fighting for the win just yet. So not too much pressure on our shoulders please!"