Sara Price shares her thoughts on racing The Dakar Rally 2025 – with utmost clarity on what she wants to achieve. Fueled by passion, courage, and strength of mind, Sara delivers more than expected – putting plans into action to race the most iconic opening Round of Rally-Raid World Championship in Saudi Arabia on January 3 – 17, 2025.
Straight up, Sara serves a potent reminder on how powerful the mind can be when focused on achieving a goal deemed too difficult for most. From securing funding to enter, to attaining all resources necessary to race – high performance car fully supported by Team, mechanics, engineers, and PR – Sara continues to rise to each and every challenge with self-belief that she can get the job done.
Most certainly, the opportunity to race The Dakar Rally on debut in 2024 was a long-held career goal – fulfilled by winning the Road to Dakar prize of gaining Dakar entry after claiming victory in the Sonora Rally in 2023. The following test racing Rally du Maroc in October 2023 with co-driver Jeremy Grey proved the goal was in sight – with Sara and Jeremy nailing their first ever Stage Special wins – Stage 2 and 3 – confirming speed, skills, and navigation was on point.
Heading into Dakar Rally 2025, Sara takes confidence that all experience gained racing Dakar 2024 remains in memory bank, put to good use when needed, and relied upon when assessing what aspects are most important racing 14 days in Saudi Arabia’s desert sands.
Sara: ”It is definitely a big feat to take on the Dakar Rally not only as an athlete from the competitive side, but from the business side to make it all happen. It’s a very expensive race that needs a lot of planning and hard work put into it to make it worth it in the end so thank you for realizing that and we are excited to give it another run. I think last year we had a great run and showed we were there to compete – winning a Stage like that last year – but we hope to have a chance at winning the whole thing”.
”Dakar is so much about strategy – that goes into play. You have to have a great team. You have to have a great navigator and you have to have a great program and place in order to do well – as well as you know – a great driver and have the endurance to stay sharp the entire time. You also have to know how to take the ups with the downs and or the downs with the ups. The main thing I learned is to stay consistent and everything starts after Rest Day”.
With focus and consistency of results upper-most in Sara’s mind, hardly surprising that the sheer length of days racing Stages 1 – 12 plus Prologue can be put on the back burner – as completing each Stage is a challenge in itself. Take Sara’s stats in Dakar 2024: Prologue: P6, Stage 1: P3, Stage 2: P7, Stage 3: P4, Stage 4: P10, Stage 5: P9, Stage 6: P4, Stage 7: P4, Stage 8: P4, Stage 9: P8, Stage 10: P1, Stage 11: P11, and Stage 12: P7 to finish P4 overall. A total of 57H 48′ 58”.
For sure, a mere 6 minutes and 42 seconds separated Sara and Jeremy from P3 podium finish – yet the result has only fueled the American driver’s desire to complete the outstanding goal in a couple of months time. Ticking off all challenging elements on the to-do-list, Sara embraces finalizing all preparations – fully supported by Can-Am Factory Team, South Racing, co-driver Sean Berriman, and Team.
Sara: ”The great thing is on the part of South Racing and the Can-Am Factory program as they handle a lot of the major logistics. I just have to get myself there and Sean – to be ready on our side as well as you know the things you want to add to the vehicle – to have it equipped in the way we would like it. But, that is a massive thing being a part of a factory program. The strategy and the support – it’s huge at DAKAR – where you need it the most out of any other racing I’ve ever done. Having Sean Berriman as my navigator is absolutely amazing. He wanted it in 2020 and he’s a great navigator. He’s been there many times and he knows his stuff so it’s confidence booster to have him on my side”.
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