“Dakar is even more a team sports than football is”

“The Dakar is a virus that gets into you and it never leaves”, Cesare ‘Ricky’ Rickler Del Mare observes. A former professional football player, he had to wait for his 30s to fully dive into his original passions: motorsports, preferably off road. Following the tracks of his father Renato, he manages a team full of adventurous drivers and he has become a fixture in the ballet of assistance trucks that save the Dakar for competitors caught in a bad trap. And since the Dakar can very much be a family affair, in 2024, Ricky jumps aboard his Man TGS with the twin brothers Aldo and Dario De Lorenzo, ready to discover a new means of storming the desert for their 10th participation in the Dakar. “We’ll have a blast”, they anticipate. Let’s ride!

R. D. M. : “For the third consecutive year, R Team, my team, has made an alliance with TH-Trucks and we will manage the assistance at the bivouac and with the trucks in the race for our cars and our customers together. We have entered 3 Polaris, 1 Can-AM and 1 Century CR6 which we will manage directly as well as 8 customer cars to whom we will provide assistance on the track with 4 trucks. And in the Dakar Classic we have 11 cars and 3 trucks.
Dakar is even more a team sports than football is. In football, we have a team of 25 players and they’re all ready to go for the same goal. The Dakar makes it even bigger. This year, with TH-Trucks, we’ll be 90 people and the point is to bring everyone together. So it’s a team work to make it that everyone gets to meet their own goals, because in the Dakar, every pilot writes his own story. But anyway, it’s always the same story: we win together, we lose together.
The Dakar is a virus that gets into you and it never leaves. When you get there, you can’t wait to start. When you’re doing it, you can’t wait to finish. And when you finish, you can’t wait to get back.”


D.D.L.: “This Dakar brings a new challenge but with the truck, the crew, our friendship, Ricky… For sure we’ll enjoy ourselves. If someone tells me: ‘Dario, this year, you’re not going for fun.’ I’m like: ‘No, this year, I will have even more fun, because I’ll see things I’ve never seen.’ And on the easier sections, Ricky will make me drive as well, and that single perspective makes me happy.
The first time we did the Dakar, we said we wouldn’t come back. Every year, we say it’s the last one. And after a few days, you’re already thinking about what you can do for the next year… Anyway, we can’t leave all our friends behind!”


A.D.L.: “After eight Dakars in the car and one in SSV, I maintain my role as a navigator alongside my twin brother. We think like one person and we can count on the energy of two. I’m very enthusiastic about this Italian crew. With Dario, we’ll aim for Ricky not to waste too much energy outside of driving. We’ll give him a hand although it’s a bit different for us to be in the truck. We are absolutely sure we’ll have a blast. That atmosphere we have makes it feel like a huge family. So we feel very animated and with a mind at peace.”