Description
Added on the 07/11/2019 08:29:11 - Copyright : Auto Moto EN
After a successful campaign in the 2018/19 FIA World Endurance Championship, Fernando Alonso and TOYOTA GAZOO Racing will join forces once again in the upcoming months for a series of tests with the Toyota Hilux, the car that is expected to compete in the next Dakar Rally.
After winning twice at Le Mans and proclaiming Endurance World Champion, the Asturian Toyota driver took the wheel of the TOYOTA GAZOO Racing Hilux Dakar for the first time in an exclusive test in the legendary Kalahari desert.Alonso carried out throughout 2019 an intense preparation program for the 2020 Dakar, his debut in the world's toughest rally.In his first Dakar, Fernando Alonso signed a remarkable performance, with the same pace as the favorites in most of the stages, being the fastest driver of TOYOTA GAZOO Racing in several stages and finishing the test among the top thirteen of the general classification .March 28, 2020 marks the first year of Fernando Alonso's first test at the wheel of the Toyota Hilux Dakar, which would ultimately become the start of the learning that led the Asturian Toyota driver to debut in the Dakar, the toughest rally in the world. Alonso carried out two exclusive days of testing in the mythical Kalahari desert to begin discovering the secrets of how to drive a rally-raid car.
All four TOYOTA GAZOO Racing crews completed the seventh stage of the 2020 Dakar Rally which saw crews take on a gruelling 546-kilometre special stage across varied terrain littered with sand dunes from Riyadh to Wadi Al Dawasir. Nasser Al-Attiyah and navigator Mathieu Baumel again set the fastest time for the team just 2min 12sec behind the stage winners, maintaining their second place in the overall rankings with a gap of ten minutes. While the stage started with small dunes, the crew’s initial charge was hamstrung by the fast tracks which favoured their two-wheel-drive competitors.
Fernando Alonso completed a successful two-day training in the Toyota Hilux on September 2-3 in Szczecin, Poland covering 700 kilometres, including sections used by the recently-concluded Baja Poland. The training course featured a variety of sand tracks, hard and soft soil, and bumpy terrain developed by rally raid specialists and the team’s logistics partner, Overdrive Racing.Fernando will head to South Africa for a non-competitive outing in the Lichtenburg 400, fifth round of the South African Cross Country Series, on September 13-14. Originally scheduled to take place near Harrismith, the event moved to its new location due to unseasonably dry conditions which posed a fire risk.
Marc Coma, five-time Dakar Rally winner in the motorbike class and six-time FIM Cross-Country Rallies World Champion, has teamed up with Fernando Alonso as his navigator at TOYOTA GAZOO Racing as the pair continues with an intensive rally raid training programme in the Toyota Hilux.An experienced rally raid campaigner, Marc, 42, first competed in the Dakar Rally in 2002 when the event was still held in Africa. With nearly two decades in the sport, most recently as Sporting Director of the Dakar Rally, Marc is perfectly positioned to work closely with Fernando, two-time Le Mans 24 Hours winner, reigning FIA World Endurance Championship title holder, two-time Formula 1 World Champion, and winner of the 24 Hours of Daytona, as both motorsport veterans push their own limits and transition into a new motorsport discipline—Fernando in rally raid and Marc on four wheels.
|
Support : Technical 
- Content 
- Editors 
