“We are amateurs racing and we aren’t magicians!”
En bref
M.G.
- Apart from a couple of very local events in uncompetitive cars back in 2009, Maria Gameiro has only been racing since 2022. And she only started because she was fed up sitting around twiddling her thumbs while her husband raced.
- But it turns out she has quite a bit of talent. In only her second year of racing she won the ladies trophy in both the Portuguese and Spanish national championships aboard her T1.
- Then in 2024 she switched to a T1+ Mini and finished third in the Spanish championships – overall! She would have finished second except that she wanted to get some dune practice in for the Dakar and so missed the last round to race the Rallye du Maroc, which she DNFed after rolling her car and bending the roll cage. For her first Dakar in 2025 she entered the Challenger category in an X-Raid Fenic with the intention to returning in 2026 in a T1+.
- And if Maria Gameiro says she’s going to do something she usually follows through!
- For 2026 she’s teamed up with a bit of a Dakar legend, Rosa Romero, who has no less than 11 Dakars under her belt, 7 of them on bikes. To make sure they properly prepared for their challenge they been busy racing throughout 2025. In total 5 races and only 1 DNF.
- Rosa Romero has been racing the Dakar a lot longer than her driver. This will be her 12th Dakar, 7 of which she entered in the bike class.
- Her husband Nani Roma was also quite good on bikes. The Ford T1+ driver is one of a very select number of competitors to have won the Dakar on both two and four wheels.
- Her last three participations were with fellow Spaniard Pedro Manuel Peñate Muñoz, all in T3. In 2024 they finished a highly respectable 12th overall in the T3 class.
- Both Pedro and Rosa are concerned with equality and inclusion in motorsport and for 2026 Rosa is going one step further by making up one half of an all female crew.
Ambition
M.G.
“My 2025 Dakar debut was very challenging. We had mechanical problems from day 1 which meant we were starting right at the back and often finishing in the dark. But we held on and got that all important finishers’ medal, which for your first Dakar is about all you can hope for. Then straight after the Dakar we switched to the T1+ car. The budget isn’t quite the same… so we had to pick our races carefully and opted for the ones that would be the most useful Dakar preparation. The Morocco Desert Challenge was our first outing and straight away Rosa and I ‘clicked’ and despite both of us not using our first language our communication has continued to improve throughout the year. We’ve been using these races essentially as training but the results have been pretty good, second T1+ on the Baja Morocco, for example. The Dubai Baja was intended to be a shakedown for the Dakar but we had a really big crash on the second day and the car had to go back to Europe to get straightened out. I like racing a lot but I value my safety above all and I wanted to be sure the car’s integrity hadn’t been compromised. That means the car will have to be air freighted to Saudi Arabia. In terms of results, you have to be realistic. We are amateurs racing against professionals and we aren’t magicians! However, I think we are the first 100% female crew to enter the Dakar in a T1+ so aiming to win the Lady’s Cup is a reasonable and worthwhile goal.”
“My 2025 Dakar debut was very challenging. We had mechanical problems from day 1 which meant we were starting right at the back and often finishing in the dark. But we held on and got that all important finishers’ medal, which for your first Dakar is about all you can hope for. Then straight after the Dakar we switched to the T1+ car. The budget isn’t quite the same… so we had to pick our races carefully and opted for the ones that would be the most useful Dakar preparation. The Morocco Desert Challenge was our first outing and straight away Rosa and I ‘clicked’ and despite both of us not using our first language our communication has continued to improve throughout the year. We’ve been using these races essentially as training but the results have been pretty good, second T1+ on the Baja Morocco, for example. The Dubai Baja was intended to be a shakedown for the Dakar but we had a really big crash on the second day and the car had to go back to Europe to get straightened out. I like racing a lot but I value my safety above all and I wanted to be sure the car’s integrity hadn’t been compromised. That means the car will have to be air freighted to Saudi Arabia. In terms of results, you have to be realistic. We are amateurs racing against professionals and we aren’t magicians! However, I think we are the first 100% female crew to enter the Dakar in a T1+ so aiming to win the Lady’s Cup is a reasonable and worthwhile goal.”
“This is the first time Maria and I will race the Dakar together but we’ve done a lot of warm up races in 2025: the Baja Aragon, the Morocco Desert Challenge, the Baja Morocco, and the Baja Dubai. We participated more for training that to chase a result and we managed to finish them all except the Baja Dubai where we had a crash. In addition, we’ve done some mechanical training so as to be able to fix the car out on the special. As far as results are concerned, there are a lot of cars entered in the T1+ category this year so it isn’t going to be easy, though we’d like to win the award for the first all female crew.”
