FIA defends Sainz Dakar withdrawal decision

The FIA has defended its decision to prevent Carlos Sainz Sr and Sebastien Loeb from completing the 2025 Dakar Rally after both sustained roll cage damage to their cars.

Two of the most high-profile drivers in this year’s Ultimate field were thrown out following separate rollovers in the opening three stages of the event. Although both Sainz Sr and Loeb were able to recover from their crashes and reach the finish line, technical inspections by the FIA afterwards deemed that their cars were no longer safe to continue. In both cases, damage to the roll cage, including deformation, was the culprit.

Dacia was unimpressed by the FIA’s verdict and appealed Loeb’s exclusion from the event, claiming that “a section of the structure, although deformed, is not an integral part of the solidity of the [said] structure and, therefore, does not impact the safety of the car.” However, it was forced to concede defeat, with Loeb taking a flight home from Jeddah on Wednesday. Sainz Sr has likewise returned to Spain after his early exit.

Now, the FIA has provided the reasoning behind its decision to exclude the former WRC champions, while also explaining why it couldn’t allow their teams to repair what it deemed as an integral part of the structure of the car.

“It’s very simple, as soon as a car has an accident on the stage, it has to be checked by the commissaries before it can be repaired,” FIA’s cross-country director Jerome Rousel told media including Motorsport.com.

“And if the roll cage is damaged, it’s the same rule in all championships for many years, for decades, as soon as the roll cage is damaged, you can’t continue.

“In theory, you can repair it, but repairing a chassis like that is not an easy thing to do overnight in the middle of nowhere. Because repairing for us is replacing the damaged tube with an identical one.

“Adding some material, welding over the crack, things like that are not allowed. That’s why, in the case of Carlos [Sainz], Laia [Sanz] and Seb, [Loeb], all these cars had to be withdrawn or disqualified because the roll cage was damaged, and as soon as the roll cage is damaged, it’s not identical to the homologated one, so it can’t continue.”

Four-time Dakar champion Sainz Sr rolled over his new Ford Raptor during the first part of the 48-hour Stage 2 on Sunday. It wasn’t until he completed the full stage on Monday that he was forced to withdraw from the rally.

This led to questions as to why Sainz’s car wasn’t checked immediately on Sunday night.

In response to that, Roussel said: “No, not during the stage, [only] when the car returns to bivouac. So, in the case of Carlos, it was during the 48-hour stage, but it could not be done in the overnight stop because it was still the same stage, and it is also a question of fairness.

“It’s not for Carlos, you needed to check, so you have to do the same for everybody. So we didn’t have marshals at every stop.

“I was at the refuelling [station] when Carlos came and asked me if he could remove the windshield, and I said yes for safety reasons. I didn’t want a small piece of glass to get in his eyes.

“But also to check the roll cage, you have to understand that you need to disassemble the car, you need to remove the bodywork, so it’s not something you can do during a stint.”

Asked if the FIA should change the rules to make it more efficient to inspect the cars, he said: “No, it’s fine like this. It’s fine the way it is because look at Seb, he did the same thing, he flipped at kilometre 12, he finished the stage. It’s exactly the same situation. Then it’s also up to the team to know if they can continue with the damaged car, and normally they always can because they have that fighting spirit that makes them so special.

“They are competitors, so they will finish at any cost. We too are disappointed with the situation, we don’t like these big names dropping out of the race after three days, no one is happy about it.

“However, safety is something you can’t compromise on. The cage is designed in a certain way, and after homologating it, after some calculations made by an independent laboratory and certified by an ASN, so even if the manufacturer says we consider it safe, it’s not an argument.

“Because it’s never the manufacturer who is going to certify the cage himself, it’s done by a third party who is independent, and that’s what these standards are for.

“The problem is that as soon as the material bends or cracks, it means it’s starting to fail, and you don’t know what the next situation is going to be. If we say it’s fine and you can go, and the next day you have another crash, it won’t bend a little bit more, it will bend a lot, it will break.

“And if you have someone who’s in the hospital or worse…some people say you behave like you’re in an office, but that’s life. We don’t want to risk the driver’s life, we don’t want to risk the competitors, and for us it’s clear. The whole cage is the skeleton of the car, and if the skeleton is damaged, for us it is not possible to continue.

“We have to repair it the same way, and the argument of saying we can make it stronger by repairing it, my answer is to make it stronger from the beginning, that’s possible, but we also want a safe and fair fight. And we’re talking about these three, but while you have maybe 20 cars that crashed, that have been overhauled in the same way, and they’re still in the race because the cars were strong enough, or the crash wasn’t big enough to damage the whole cage.

“So this is a normal procedure. At the moment it makes a lot of noise because they are with big names, but it’s nothing special, and it happens like this all the time. When it happens on a two- or three-day rally, there’s no question. You put the car on the trailer, you go home, and you’ll be back next time. This is the biggest race in the world, so of course every single thing takes on a bigger dimension.”