Sven Quandt is a man of great experience and you know that you shouldn’t put all your eggs in one basket. Although the most immediate future of the off-road discipline passes through hybrid technology and the link with Audi through the new Q Motorsport structure ensures this future, X-Raid’s alma mater knows he can’t leave his legacy behind. Even if there has been a huge transfer of talent from X-Raid to Q Motorsport at the engineer and driver level with the signings of Carlos Sainz and Stéphane Peterhansel, the X-Raid project will continue to live adopting, yes, a philosophy a little different from the current one.
X-Raid had a hard core of pilots that allowed for a dual structure. Sainz and Peterhansel were the protagonists of the project with the MINI JCW Buggy, while ‘Orly’ Terranova and Vladimir Vasilyev were the two most outstanding drivers at the wheel of the numerous MINI JCW Rallys managed by X-Raid, at least in the last Dakar. And it is precisely this conception of the team that will prevail. And is that The idea of X-Raid is to offer-rent- its MINI JCW Buggy and its 4x4s to private pilots of a certain level. The first to debut this formula, Sebastián Halpern in the Rally of Kazakhstan with one of the buggies of the structure.
Carlos Sainz hints that his future in the Dakar is with AudiRead news
Thus, Q Motorsport will stay with the ‘official’ program with Audi and X-Raid will move to a ‘racing-customer’ model with MINI, as explained by the own Sven Quandt: «X-Raid will continue as we know it, albeit led by another group of people on the Dakar. MINIs will continue to be developedWe have a plan in this regard that could not be carried out in 2020 due to COVID restrictions, but they will continue to improve. The evolution of the buggy and the 4×4 has not stopped and they will be vehicles for first-class customers with a brand of the likes of MINI on the back ”.
