Price looking to capitalize on Dakar opportunity with Defender

Sara Price is living the dream. Fresh from winning a trio of stages in the SSV (T4) class of the Dakar Rally last year and one the year before, she’s gearing up to graduate to the premier category – and with one of the most iconic names in off-road.

It seems strange that Land Rover, a brand many look to as a benchmark and trailblazer in the consumer world, has never had a factory presence in the Dakar Rally. But that’ll change next year when the Defender brand – a result of a new strategy from parent company JLR (formerly Jaguar Land Rover) to split former Land Rover products into distinct individual brands) – enters.

Price will be one of the team’s drivers, along with 14-time Dakar winner Stephane Peterhansel and three-time T4 World Rally Raid champion Rokas Baciuska, and she doesn’t hide her excitement about what lies ahead.

“It's been absolutely amazing,” she tells RACER, speaking at last week’s Goodwood Festival of Speed. “This is a dream come true for me after the last two years of making it happen and finally getting there and getting to have good results, after winning four stages, and now getting this chance to be with such an iconic brand in Defender, it's kind of a match made in heaven.”

Price and Defender will compete in a field that includes factory efforts from Toyota, Dacia, and Ford. It’s something of a new golden era for long distance rallying, which hasn’t had as much factory attention for years. It shouldn’t be a surprise, either. As more and more people buy SUVs as their daily drivers, Dakar and the wider World Rally-Raid Championship is the only realistic motorsport environment where those kinds of products can be showcased.

“I think it's going to be a new age for Dakar,” Price says. “I think you're going to see a lot of manufacturers start to come in, and this is gonna be the class to watch.

“It's a place where you can show off your actual vehicles you can buy for everyday driving, and that's where they're going to generate income and money. So supporting this class only makes sense because they're going to see those cars that consumers can buy for the road, racing.

“Dakar also is the toughest place in the world to showcase a vehicle, so if you finish well, I guarantee you’ll sell a few because of that.”

Being a Californian, Price brings plenty of off-road pedigree to the British team, something that’ll be mutually beneficial for Defender on both sides of the Atlantic.

“Defender's huge in America, so that's a plus,” she says. “But also having the American off-road side, it's such a compliment to the Dakar programs in any shape or form, because the way we set up our vehicles is very similar. The way that you have to race them is very similar.

“And then what Dakar brings that's a little different is the navigation side, and also the rules and regulations. They're a lot more stricter than anything we're used to in America, but I think when you have a good team and you have good people on your side fighting for you, and what you know matters in the vehicle, that's key, and I think we have that.”

Price might be driving for a new team and brand, but JLR has assembled the perfect melting pot for its first crack at the world’s biggest rally raid. Part of that is having Prodrive onboard.

“I think the team's taking a lot of input, and obviously we have Prodrive in our corner and being the one who's building a lot of the vehicle, and they're very knowledgeable,” she says. “They know what they're doing, and so having that trust in a program, it's been kind of a really amazing symmetry between both of the brands, from Prodrive and JLR.

“It's instilled a lot of trust for me, and it's kind of nice because they understand my view, and they take my input, and then they make it work.”

Prodrive brings plenty of pedigree to the table with its three Drivers' and three Constructors' titles with Subaru in the World Rally Championship and three podiums in the last four Dakar Rallies with its Hunter T1+, but Peterhansel’s addition to the team elevates it even further. The Frenchman won the rally six times in the '90s in the motorcycle class, and added eight more between 2004-2021 with Mitsubishi, Mini, and Peugeot after switching to four wheels.

Price, similarly switched from two to four wheels in her career, and has wasted no time in leaning on the veteran to learn as much as she can.

“We just got back from a test session, and I got to spend a lot of time with him,” she says. “What a legend. Obviously he’s the winningest driver in Dakar, and that says one thing, We kind of have similar backgrounds, coming from motorcycles into cars, so it's a lot I can relate to. But also just to get to talk to him and ask him questions, it's just really awesome. He's such a great person, and an athlete that I respect very much.

“A lot of us come from two wheels and we end up going four, and I think it's a huge benefit because then we know how to retrain a little bit better than someone who comes from car racing, because car racing, you're not paying attention to terrain as much. You're kind of paying more attention to the car, whereas in motocross you're taught every single day on that motorcycle to read terrain and to do the best you possibly can in certain areas where you can make up little seconds instead of just bashing through something.”

Next year’s Dakar seems like a while away – it’s in January – but price and the Defender team aren’t looking at it that way. They’re working flat out, gaining valuable mileage and insight with a pair of D7X-R ‘mule’ cars, and there’s still more to come before they head to Saudi Arabia for the big game.

“We’ve had two cars and we've been just putting as many miles as we possibly can, testing out certain parts for when the race car does get done in about a month,” Price says. “We'll be able to implement those products on there very fast and make it more of a turn and go kind of program instead of just getting our new car and then starting from scratch. 

“Hopefully we get ahead of it since it is coming out fast. Between all three of us drivers, we've been putting a lot of time in.

“We're going to get to the race car and start the real testing, and so I think we're just waiting for that, and then doing small tests up until then just to fine tune a few things that we've made changes on, and we're excited.”