Organizers of the Formula E Championship, the world’s premier electric car race series, on Tuesday revealed a new Gen2 Evo race car that’s set to compete from the 2020/2021 season.
British motorsport and engineering group Prodrive has been around since 1984 and over the years has built numerous successful race and rally cars. We’re talking about the Porsche 911 SC RS of the 1980s, Subaru Impreza WRX World Rally cars of the 1990s and 2000s, and an assortment of GT cars for Aston Martin and other teams. Now it’s turning its attention toward the grueling Dakar rally.
Together with Bahrain, more specifically, the country’s Mumtalakat sovereign wealth fund, which also owns McLaren, Prodrive will establish the new subsidiary Prodrive International whose task is to style and manufacture a bespoke off-roader for the Dakar rally.
A computer-generated image of the vehicle was released on Wednesday alongside confirmation that the Prodrive-developed off-roader is going to be ready in time for the 2021 Dakar rally. The event will once more run in Saudi Arabia, which hosted the 2020 rally, where the Bahrain-sponsored JCW X-Raid team claimed victory because of the efforts of Carlos Sainz, Sr. and Lucas Cruz.
Prodrive and Bahrain will have a jointly run team that will field two of the off-roaders within the 2021 Dakar’s premier T1 class. Prodrive is additionally willing to create additional examples for any interested customer teams.
“It has been a long-held ambition of mine and Prodrive to compete within the Dakar rally,” said David Richards, Prodrive chairman, and founder. “To be ready to do so with the dominion of Bahrain’s sovereign wealth fund, Mumtalakat, and in Saudi Arabia, makes the prospect even more special because the Middle East is where Prodrive started its motorsport journey in 1984.”