The Ford Performance division of Ford Motor Co. in Dearborn is taking an extreme racing version of its Ford Ranger — the Ranger Raptor T1+ — to the famed off-road Dakar Rally in Saudi Arabia in 2024.
The first step in the multi-year plan to compete in the Dakar Rally is to finish and learn in collaboration with longtime partners M-Sport and Neil Woolridge Motorsport (NWM) for vehicle development, servicing, and event management.
“To lead the charge at one of the ultimate global off-road events — the Dakar Rally — has been a goal of ours,” says Mark Rushbrook, global director of Ford Performance Motorsports. “We cannot underestimate the enormity of the challenge ahead of us. We need to finish and learn first with Ranger T1+ and partners like M-Sport and NWM, who bring their expertise to bear. Together, we can do amazing things in the sand dunes of the Arabian Peninsula.”
The automaker, which has raced and won from Le Mans to Monaco, Daytona to Bathurst, and Finke to Ensenada is taking a purpose-built, high-performance Ford Ranger to compete in the event’s Rally Raid T1+ category.
The joint Ford Performance, M-Sport, and NWM team has implemented a series of development phases through 2023 and continues testing with the Ranger T1+, based on the previous generation global Ranger, with a 3.5-liter EcoBoost engine. Test races are expected to include Spain’s Baja España Aragón and Morocco’s Rally du Maroc rallies in July and October, respectively, before tackling the Dakar Rally next year.
“Our first time in Dakar will be a learning adventure that will help inform how we compete in the future,” says Rushbrook. “But as with all racing, we’re not just racing to win, we’re also racing to help build better products for our customers.”
For the 2025 Dakar Rally, Ford Performance and M-Sport are developing an all-new, custom-built Ranger Raptor T1+ designed and built to Dakar’s T1+ class regulations.
“The Dakar Rally is truly among the pinnacle of global off-road racing events,” says Malcolm Wilson, managing director at M-Sport. “We’ve achieved great success over the years with Ford in FIA WRC rally racing and can’t wait to apply this same level of focus, energy and effort to competing with Ranger in Dakar.”
M-Sport campaigns the M-Sport Ford Puma HybridRally1 in the FIA World Rally Championship, as well as builds engines for the Mustang GT3 program. NWM has played a pivotal role since the infancy of the Rally-Raid Ranger, as the team developed and built units at its facility in Pietermaritzburg, KwaZulu-Natal, specified to compete in full Dakar T1+ regulations in the South African Rally-Raid Championship (SARRC) and around the world.
