Supporting Audi in their bid for glory

On the Dakar, top drivers need competent fast assistance, and so Q Motorsport, the team set up by Sven Quandt and his sons to run the Audi RS Q e-tron programme, have once again enlisted the services of Michael Baumann in his MAN TGA 11 truck. The 54-year-old German will be joined for the fourth consecutive edition by his trusty navigator Philip Beier and ‘new boy’ Sebastian Lindner who joined the other two for the first time last year, but who has been with Audi’s competition department since 1999! Once again supporting Stephane Peterhansel, Carlos Sainz and Mattias Ekstrom, they are hoping for a slightly easier run than in in 2022 and 2023 but are once again ready to sacrifice themselves for ‘their’ cars.

Sebastian Lindner: “2023 was really tough. On the first day we were going through the last dune quite late at night when we got stuck. It took us 15 hours to get out! I’m the electronics expert so my lap top is the most important piece of equipment I carry but we also have 4 big boxes of spares. We try and carry only the stuff that we could use to fix the cars at the side of the track but our truck is still heavy... We missed the 2nd stage, then stage 3 was cancelled for us because of the rain and then we had a couple of cool days before the crashes of Peterhansel and Sainz. Then in the Empty Quarter the dunes were really hard. We couldn’t get through them but managed to find a way round and were able to assist Mattias Ekstrom on the marathon stage. Looking at this year’s route I have a feeling it is going to be even harder than 2023…”