“The fast guys are coming from the rally as well”
En bref
- Jourdan Serferidis isn’t exactly a young gun. He however remains a rookie on the Dakar. At 61 years of age, the Greek driver will indeed be discovering the Dakar.
- A successful businessman and founder of Arhs Developments, he got into motorsports after bumping into Sebastien Loeb in Sweden on the occasion of a team building trip. And that encounter is what made him want to get into rallying. That was back in 2012 and since then he’s competed all over the world from the lower categories all the way up to WRC.
- The next step up was of course the Dakar. And to do so Serferidis first had to adapt to cross-country rallies which is what his main focus was on in 2025. In a Ford Raptor, the driver who is based in Belgium took part in the Baja Spain before heading to W2RC with the Portuguese and Moroccan legs of the championship.
- Part of the M-Sport Rallyraid team alongside legends such as Sainz, Roma and Ekstrom, the rally veteran won’t be only hoping to have fun. He wants results alongside his regular codriver Frédéric Miclotte.
Ambition
J.S.: “My story in motorsports is a bit strange. We were on a lake in Sweden with my company. We were doing team building and also a customer experience on the frozen lake, drifting, etc. And by accident, we were in exactly the same hotel as Sébastien Loeb, who was testing before Sweden with the Citroën DS3 WRC.We met in the sauna, also by accident, and we were laughing a bit. And I said, ‘I need to do rally’. That’s what started me in rallying.
I started in 2012 with Rally 2 cars, I was always willing to drive the car driven by the young guys! So, I didn’t start with the old-timers or historic rallies.
The Dakar is most probably the most difficult race in the world. It’s also long. Last year I did the Safari Kenya historic. It’s also 10 days and I enjoyed the principle of this kind of rally. Of course, the car is not the same because I was driving a Porsche 911 from the ’80s. The [Ford] Raptor will be something else. And in the sand. Because I have very little experience in the sand so that will be most probably one of the challenges I have to face. But coming from rally to that kind of discipline, we have a lot of examples of successful people. You see it with Martin Prokop, Al Rajhi, Sébastien Loeb, Nasser Al Attiyah… the fast guys are coming from the rally as well. So, I want to try it and I want to do it once at least, this is the thing that I want to do. We recently managed to finish the Rallye du Maroc. It wasn’t the performance that we were hoping for but it was another good experience. Now all we’re thinking about is the Dakar.”
