In a race of two weeks and 7,000 kilometers, it is difficult to accept that a few meters, even centimeters, can ruin everything on the first day. But that’s the Dakar Rally. For Laia Sanz i Pla-Giribert (Corbera de Llobregat, Barcelona; 39 years old), the fateful outcome of the first stage in her 15th participation means the first abandonment of her career in the race. “Sooner or later, this moment had to come. I didn’t want it to be this year, but luck also influences this, no matter how much I had worked hard,” the Catalan pilot tells Morning Express. In the middle of dense dust while driving behind Giniel de Villiers’ Toyota, a stone on the road—literally—caused his car to overturn violently and break one of the steel bars that make up the vehicle’s safety box.
Although she and her Italian co-driver Maurizio Gerini refused assistance to repair their Century Racing CRT-6 that had crashed at kilometer 330 and managed to correct the damage to cross the finish line with two minutes of margin over the established time limit, the Federation stewards International Automobile Federation (FIA) gave them the worst news around midnight on Saturday. That damaged bar had sunk two millimeters, and the regulations are clear in these cases that affect the heart of the vehicle’s chassis: they could not continue for safety reasons. “It’s understandable, but it hurts. The FIA must be very demanding with safety issues and we have to accept it, no matter how much the team engineers said that nothing was going to happen,” he adds from Bisha, with the rest of the caravan already competing in the demanding 48-hour stage.
“It has been a hard night, but this morning I am a little more cheerful. It is difficult to see everyone go out to the stage and it hurts a lot to stay here, but you have to take it philosophically and work for the next one, there is no other option,” says Sanz. She came from a streak of 14 finishes in 14 previous participations, 11 of them on a motorcycle, where she reached a historic ninth position for women in the 2015 edition. Without barely having been able to sleep a wink due to the accumulated frustration, the Spaniard puts in perspective on the achievements accumulated in his career: “What I have achieved so far has been very incredible, and if I think about it, I value it a lot.” That does not take away the bad taste in her mouth after having achieved first position in two-wheel drive vehicles (4×2) in the 2025 prologue and having arrived in Saudi Arabia with the intention of winning the race in her category, where she was third. last year—15th overall—.
Although Sanz has the status of Dakar legend, a distinction awarded by the organization itself, the pioneering motorcycle driver and competitive since her first participation in cars assures that none of that helps when she has to look for a project to continue the adventure for another year. “It is not easy to have opportunities. There are many factors at play, from the policies of leading brands to luck itself, being in the right place at the right time. When I was racing motorcycles I was in a similar situation and I would never have imagined that I would end up racing for the official Honda, KTM or GasGas teams. You have to dream and think that one day it may come,” he reflects.
The budget to compete in a car is much larger than that of a motorcycle, and obtaining financing and sponsors is a daunting task even for a figure of his caliber. “I have to row all year round, and more than once I have found myself more outside than inside,” he emphasizes. One of Sanz’s invisible handicaps is the one that affected Cristina Gutiérrez in the past, who now enjoys a historic opportunity as an official Dacia driver. Without that support from a brand, it is impossible to prepare well for the race, test in the desert and participate in warm-up rallies like the one in Morocco. Another problem is the priority that the FIA gives to the vehicles that compete in the entire World Rally-Raid Championship, which tends to delay those who do not pay for that registration in the starting order stage after stage. This year, the Catalan had barely been able to ride with any vehicle due to her tight finances.
Sanz, despite the blow, remains positive for the future, especially when she looks at those around her in the Dakar caravan. “Until now no woman had stood out so much since Jutta Kleinschmidt’s victory, probably due to a lack of women. This generation that we formed with Cristina and Sarah Price, among others, has shown that with opportunities, women are at the level of leadership of men,” she points out. “There are more and more of us, and you only have to see the atmosphere in the bivouac to realize this. We are about 50 pilots and co-pilots, but there are also engineers, team leaders or mechanics. All this has changed a lot, and I still remember that not so long ago I was alone in the camps,” he concludes.
