The Ultimate Raptor | A Dakar Rally Evolution: Ford Raptor T1+ | Ford Racing
The DAR Rally requires immense dedication, preparation, and commitment. And yet, its unforgiving reputation lies in what you cannot prepare for. Carlos Science has flipped 139K into the stage. The challenge that it is for the people, the drama that we had with Carlos, with with Nanny and four-time winner Carlos signed his out of the Dhakar rally after just the second stage. Nanny with technical issues. That’s two champions now out for Ford for Ford before stage three. Change like this in one second. Mitch Guthrie finishes stage eight in third place. They’re up to fifth overall. Another puncture for Matias and Emile. That is more drop time. The stage 10 victory for Nanny. The first ever Dhaka stage win for Ford. The stage 11 honors go to Matias and Emil. That is two wins backto back. Ford holds on for a podium finish on their first ever Dhakar. What a roller coaster ride it has been to get third place to get on the podium at Dhakar. It meant a lot to the team. It shows we’re there. But we want more. We want to win. That is our commitment to win. So we’ve got to look at every element of the program to make it better. That starts with a vehicle. We know we already have a fast truck, but we know we can make it incrementally faster by paying attention to detail everywhere on the truck. The body, the arrow, the weight, the cooling, the suspension, the chassis. It’s attention to every detail. [Applause] So, the beauty of having our production side at back at M Sport is we actually can make a lot of the parts for the car in house as well. A big push for this car has been in weight reduction and also using the weight that we can save in the right places on the car. So the rear end is a lot shorter. Yeah. But we’ve done that to save weight at the back of the car and try and move the weight forward into the middle of the car. Now we’ve got the fog light spray lights at a lower level along the back of the car and we’ve lost the strokes all together. As you can see with the new tail light unit gets strike by a branch or something like that. Yeah, you can actually remove the whole light without separating them. Okay, we’re designing on computers and that is pretty much constant. We’re always evolving. If we were to take the the rear cooling pack as an example, so you need to design the coolers themselves and all the ducting iteration after iteration. The gestation period of a design of a aspect of a car varies enormously. So for a chassis, it’s going to be months. we need to design and analyze everything before we can even make a jig to start manufacturing a chassis. Whereas a 3D printed component, we can have an idea, print it, put it on the car the next day. A lot of parts on the car are new for this year. So, we’ve got to put as many miles on them as possible and also prove that they are working in the right direction for us. So, with all the Evo parts now ready, it’s time to test them. And for that as a team, it means heading to Morocco. [Music] You’re okay. It’s stable now. The low speed I can feel it again. This is more comfort, but you lose the precision precision. So I think to do the long loop, I will go back to maybe three or four. Comfort is comfort is always really good. This is always really good. Okay, we are quite low on fuel already. Also here we do it. Yeah. Yeah. So we try with the high speed like we say. Two clicks. Okay. All around. We’re here in Morocco. finally bring in the new upgrades with the dampers. So from D car 25, you know, obviously getting third and being so close was was really tough, but we went back to the drawing board and you know, where can we be better? A fast gravel stages felt like we just didn’t have the traction to have the corner speed. Then in the dunes, we felt like we just didn’t have the bottoming protection that we needed for the drivers to be able to push, you know, full pace. So those are the two main areas that we wanted to improve. We lightened the shocks or the dampers quite a bit and then we designed some new internals to get us more performance. Moving in the right direction. We’ve we’ve found a lot more grip. The speeds have come up and the feedback has been very positive. At this status of my career, I think I know what I have to do to prepare the race. I thought also before last year I I was very well prepared and I was actually well prepared but you know I have a lot of expectations and small mistake cost a lot. We have a small issue with the roll cage that was enough to send send us home but you know in life you need to keep motivated you need to keep your ambition. You have to turn the page and keep thinking positive for the next chapter. That car is really special in that you have different surfaces across one stage. In one day you can have dunes, camel grass, trials, fast tracks, world tracks. Sort of going from one part of the country to the other. And you need to have a setup that’s going to work in all of those conditions. You need to sort of find a good compromise. It’s all about compromise in the end. When you have a car that works in every surface, you have a competitive car. [Applause] So I think we can remove the drive shaft. We don’t have one 16 mil nut on that. And then we have to crack that which is going to be a bit. That’s why I said we need to do pull two pull two days on this. [Music] looking for. Are you ready to rock? You want me to go crazy? All right, let’s do it. [Music] Okay. The good thing is is overall like full of fuel. It’s not bad. It’s just a lot, you know, like it steps out, kind of catches, and gets traction, but you’re like hanging it out there. Okay, we’re here in Zerago, Spain, testing the newly developed T1 Plus. Gen 1 was really an amazing truck out of the box. It was great. But, you know, as you race through the season, you have these little things you want to change and improve, and even things that aren’t on my side, it’s engineering things that make the car easier to work on. DAR 2025 was uh it was crazy for me. Um I actually have raced DAR a few times but never in a T1 plus. The feeling coming fifth in DAR was it it felt like a win especially when you go into it your first one in a T1 plus I had no idea where we would be what to expect. Um Gen 2 is you know just even better now. There’s a few um little things that like we figure out like during D car last year like one thing could be the the side window. Mitch was running with the doors open. It was because he had a problem with the way the doors operated and as soon as he had the door open he noticed he had a lot more confidence traversing June so he could see down to the side of the car. That gave us an opportunity to build in better downward side vision into the car. So you’ll see on the door now the level of the window is quite different the previous car and that’s one of the little things that they change that really is a lot of work. It’s a lot of work that those engineers have to put in and um for a little small change, but for us driving that adds up to a lot and a lot of hopefully gained time in the next rally. From the first corner, it was easy to feel that the car is more agile and the weight of the car have changed slightly. So it’s easy to feel that it’s just slightly better in most areas. So there is no big thing. It’s just an evolution and hoping that uh this will be enough that we can go and fight for the win. I have always been very picky with steering and brakes. I don’t want it too physical to steer or too physical to break. So it’s nice when the car is light to drive for me. It’s already a tough job enough for two weeks. some interesting insights from Matas where towards the end of the race he was taking some more risks and he was taking more and more spare parts out of the car. Give us the car right down to the weight limit without allow us to run lower center of gravity and that got us thinking about more about how we might take risks in the future. Yesterday here when we drove I have to say it’s was a pure pleasure. I said to him, “These are one of those days when motor racing is at its best.” The setup is really, really good. And we’re at the point now where we’re so happy with it that it’s like uh at the point of just basically changing clicks and trying to really fine-tune and improve as best we can. So, the plan is to have exactly the same driver lineup as we had in 2025 going into 2026. The motion, it’s big part of everything. You know this is the mental side when we lose the race so earlier feel sad and it’s it’s frustrating to be honest but in the same time it was so emotional that the day when I won the stage it’s the moment you say okay all the hard moments all the hard situations it threw that I think being realistic is not my strength I always been unrealistic as a person and you know I would have loved to win it on the first time but being on the podium getting a trophy. I think that’s great. I mean, when you come as a new manufacturer with a new car, it’s not so easy. Many people go to that car and they train for years to try and win it and some they never do. You know that you can’t take for granted that everybody will win. Dhaka now is so competitive and so close you, you know, you have to be literally on it the whole way through and it it the margins are so much tighter than they were. Nobody can change the past only we can improve from the future. A lot of things happened in my personal life. my cancer with the accident of Mark it bring me something special in say okay the life in one fiction of second change enjoy the moment don’t thinking to from tomorrow it’s now it day and go when I look backward first days obviously you could feel the car is good but one thing is good and the next step is a winning car and I want to think that we have all the ingredients now to prepare a winning car. And this is our task. This is our goal. This is why we are all working together. Everyone in this team have one goal. It’s win.
Just over seven months after Ford Racing’s Dakar Rally debut in the Raptor T1+ and its podium finish, the Ford M-Sport team lifts the covers on the newly developed Ford Raptor T1+. We follow the painstakingly detail-oriented development of every aspect of the rally-raid vehicle to evolve in design, technology, ability, and durability to match the gruelling Dakar Rally. Following feedback from Carlos Sainz, Mattias Ekström, Nani Roma, and Mitch Guthrie, as well as engineers and mechanics, production of parts, and vehicle rebuilds, the drivers and co-drivers join the team across their season test schedule to prepare for what lies ahead.
We dive behind the scenes with the technical team and drivers, revealing the technical and design processes, changes made, as well as mental and physical demands required to develop the Raptor to a version worthy of succeeding in the one of the world’s toughest off-road races.
Join us as we tackle obstacles, enhance performance, test humans and machine in the UK, Spain, and Morocco, and take the final steps in preparation towards the Dakar 2026.
Learn more about the ultimate Raptor’s newest features here: https://www.fordracing.com/motorsport/off-road-racing/ford-unveils-updated-raptor-t1.html
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