Fernando Alonso will make his Dakar Rally debut in 2020 with Toyota after being named in a four-car line-up in a launch event on Friday.
Two-time F1 World Champion, Alonso, has been confirmed to take part in the 2020 Dakar Rally with Toyota in a launch event in Spain, with the names of the other three drivers also revealed. Alonso will have Marc Coma as his navigator.
The Spaniard has been testing the Toyota Hilux rally machine from March onward under the watchful eyes of Giniel de Villiers, in order to prepare for the Dakar 2020 event to take place in Saudi Arabia. Alonso participated in two rally raid competition as well, with Coma.
While the Lichtenburg 400 was a local South African Cross-Country series, their second outing at the Rally of Morocco was the duo’s first international rally raid competition, where a 90mph crash spoiled his hopes of a Top 10 result on debut.
Alonso and Coma also completed a successful four-day testing session before the Rally of Morocco near Erfoud. In addition, the Le Mans winner has completed private training with Nasser Al-Attiyah in Qatar as well after completing his South African event.
As mentioned earlier, Alonso and Coma team up to be the fourth team for Toyota in Dakar 2020. Reigning champion in the Cars category, Al-Attiyah will return with his navigator Mathieu Baumel to lead Toyota’s charge to another success.
The second team consists of de Villiers and his navigator Alex Haro, with the third team being Bernhard Ten Brinke and his navigator Tom Colsoul. The rally starts on January 5 in Jeddah, after which they will move to Riyadh and will finish in Al-Qiddiya on January 17.
Here’s the details of how Fernando Alonso performed in Morocco Rally
Alonso battles roll over, bird hit in first off-road Lichtenburg 400 outing
The report was written by Venkatesh P Koushik and edited by Darshan Chokhani
