If you’re thinking “what on earth would TentBox have to do with a WRC rally team?”, we’d have been right with you a few months ago… But late last year, we partnered up with the guys over at Bahrain Raid Xtreme, supplying them with a range of TentBox Cargo models for the team to sleep in during big events.
The Hunter
There were two key things that drew us to working with Bahrain Raid Xtreme. Firstly, their hero vehicle – The Hunter – is powered by a new sustainable fuel, Prodrive EcoPower, which reduces carbon emissions by 80%. Secondly, they have Sebastien Loeb in their roster of drivers – need we say more?
We recently received images from their first race of the season – the Dakar rally – and all got pretty excited at TentBox HQ. Having three huge trucks with four Cargos installed on each is quite a sight to see!
A word from the team
Here’s what the team had to say about their 2023 Dakar Rally experience...
Now that the dust has settled upon our campaign on the world’s toughest motorsport event, the Dakar Rally, we thought we’d look back over some of the highlights from the past three weeks in Saudi Arabia.
There was the heat of Yanbu where the rally started, the solitude of the Empty Quarter and the mud of the final day into Dammam but the Prodrive Hunter stood out as the most successful car on the 14 stages of this year’s event as it took nine stage wins including winning every single stage over the second week including a record setting six wins in a row for Sébastien Loeb/Fabian Lurquin.
Without the loyalty of Bahrain and the commitment we’ve had from day one of this project, we would not have been able to reach the heights we have done over the past three years on the world’s biggest motorsport event. From starting out as the new guys in 2021, taking three stage victories in 2022 and now nine stage wins in 2023, it has been from the belief of Bahrain in Prodrive that has achieved these results.
Loeb and Lurquin now lead the World Rally Raid Championship following Dakar due to their consistency and pace over the stages with the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge, round two of the Championship that starts on February 23rd across many similar dunes to those tackled last week through the Empty Quarter where the Prodrive Hunter won every stage of the 1167 kilometres that took place there.
Running for the second full year on Coryton’s sustainable fuel that reduces the Hunter’s CO2 emissions by 80%, stage nine saw the car take all three places on the 439 kilometre long stage from Riyadh to Haradh with Loeb fastest from Vaidotas Zala/Paulo Fiuza by just 57 seconds and Guerlain Chicherit/Alex Winocq in third. To achieve such a result with the car in only it’s second Dakar and the third for the Prodrive Bahrain Raid Xtreme team is a huge achievement and testament to the continual hard work from all the team and partners who have pushed from day one on the project.
67 people were part of the team that ran four cars on the rally with 27 vehicles being part of the entire squad that enabled the rally cars to cover the 8,500km long route with 14 different nationalities working hand in hand around the clock.
The GCK Motorsport Hunter of Chicherit/Winocq was the only ‘non-factory’ car to win two stages on this year’s event proving that the team structure in place at Prodrive works at this new ultra competitive level of Rally Raid.
We couldn’t have done any of this without our partners who made us sleep warm and comfortably in Criterion sleeping bags in TentBoxes on top of the MAN Trucks but it was the noise from the Akrapovic exhaust that truly started the day before the drivers sat in their Sparco seats. Come lunchtime the Red Bull was on hand to give us an energy lift before changing the AP Racing brakes once the car got back to service underneath the Inflatable Structures tent. The oil top-up was with Bardahl that was stored in the Geidobler lockers all under the lights that were powered by the KFZ Technik generators!
