Rally: F1 Champion Fernando Alonso to Compete in 2020 Dakar Rally

Double Formula 1 World Champion and 24 Hours of Le Mans winner Fernando Alonso has confirmed today that he will compete in the infamous Dakar Rally in January 2020 with Toyota.

The Spaniard will become the first F1 champion to race in the desert endurance event, which he will compete in a Toyota Hilux pick-up.

He took part in a series of rallies in the desert at Lichtenberg and Morocco in preparation for the event which has challenged the motorsport great to his core.

And after it was announced he would compete in the 2020 Dakar Rally, Alonso said:

“After Formula 1, I started to discover some new things in motorsport and the most iconic races. 

“I started with the World Endurance Championship, we won Le Mans twice and the world championship and that feeling and that family I found inside Toyota opened my eyes for other opportunities.

“One of those opportunities was this one: Dakar. It’s the hardest race on the planet.” – Fernando Alonso.

This is certainly another challenge that will test the Spaniard to the absolute limit as he seeks to become one of the most well-rounded racing drivers of this generation.

Since leaving F1 at the end of 2018, he has primarily focused on the triple crown, winning the 24 Hours of Le Mans twice with Toyota Gazoo Racing to add to his two Monaco GP race wins. But he has yet to master the Indianapolis 500 after this year’s aborted attempt meant that the Spaniard failed to even qualify for the historic race.

The Dakar Rally has been running since 1979 and for the majority ran from Paris to the Senegalese capital Dakar. But civil unrest in 2009 saw the race move to South America ever since.

But the event in 2020 will run in the Arabian Peninsula; starting in Jeddah on 5 January and finishing outside Qiddia on 17 January.

He will be joined at the Toyota team by Rally Raid veteran Bernhard Ten Brinke, 2009 Dakar winner Giniel de Villiers and WRC’s Nasser Al-Attiyah, who won the event last year with Toyota.