At the beginning of this year, Defender Rally took part in its first race as a team and began this year’s World Rally Raid Championship season by taking on one of the most legendary and daunting races in the rally sport: the Dakar Rally. Competing in the Stock category of the race, the team experienced incredible success in the effort, with drivers Rokas Baciuška and Oriol Vidal winning, Sara Price and Sean Berriman placing second, and Stéphane Peterhansel and Mika Metge placing fourth.
Going into the Dakar Rally, the three-car effort was only going to compete in the Dakar Rally, while Peterhansel and Baciuška would drive in a two-car effort for the rest of the W2RC. However, it was recently announced that Defender Rally would bring the full Dakar team to the second round of the W2RC, which is taking place in Portugal. The bp Ultimate Rally-Raid Portugal, which will run from March 17 to March 22, with all three pairs of drivers taking the race on in the Defender D7X-R.
Defender Rally is currently at the top of the W2RC’s Stock category standings after enjoying 1-2-3 finishes in ten of the 13 stages of the Dakar season opener, and the rally car is closely related to the production Defender OCTA, Defender’s performance-oriented flagship model. With the same 4.4-liter twin-turbo V8 engine, the D7X-R and the OCTA have the same immense power and much of the same off-road capability, while the rally car is modified for some of the more extreme racing conditions.
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The bp Ultimate Rally-Raid Portugal will consist of five stages, starting in Grandola, and finishing in Loulé in the Algarve, covering over 1,300 miles, with a new route this year that promises more varied terrain and more challenging sections for drivers. As the team gets ready to take on the race in Portugal, Defender Rally will complete a pre-rally test program with the support of its partners, including Castrol, Bilstein, YETI and Bell & Ross, and suppliers Shackleton and Alpinestars.
Image Source: Defender Rally
