Latest news with #StephanePeterhansel
Top Gear
07-05-2025
- Automotive
- Top Gear
Here's your first look at the V8 Defender Octa that'll take on the Dakar
Plus, confirmation that 14-time Dakar winner Stephane Peterhansel will helm the works team Land Rover is chucking a Defender Octa into the 'stock' category of the World Rally Raid Championship next January, and the first images of the prototype - christened the 'Dakar D7X-R' - have just dropped. Sporting a fresh camo livery teeming with white stickers, the backdrop for these initial tests is the Moroccan section of the Sahara Desert - chosen to 'mirror' the sort of extreme heat and dusty conditions the D7X-R will face in less than eight months. And an excuse for some of the engineers to kick up a plume or two, probably.
CNA
07-05-2025
- Automotive
- CNA
Rallying-'Mr Dakar' Peterhansel returns with Defender for 2026
'Mr Dakar' Stephane Peterhansel, a record 14 times winner of the Dakar Rally, will return to the gruelling endurance event next year aged 60 as a driver for Jaguar Land Rover's Defender brand. The Frenchman, who turns 60 in August, did not enter this year after Audi withdrew but will be back in Saudi Arabia next January competing in the Stock category for production-based vehicles. It will be Peterhansel's 36th career Dakar, an event he last won in 2021 with Mini. He will also compete in the full World Rally-Raid Championship. Peterhansel won the Dakar six times on motorcycles between 1991 and 1998 before switching in 1999 to cars and winning with Mitsubishi, Mini and Peugeot. "I'm looking forward to taking on this new challenge and together I hope we can take Defender to the top step of the podium," he said in a statement after prototype testing in Morocco's Sahara desert. While Peterhansel holds the record for most wins, Spaniard Carlos Sainz - father of the namesake Formula One driver - is the oldest winner after taking his fourth victory in 2024 at the age of 61. Defender also announced the signing of Lithuanian driver Rokas Baciuska, 25. A third driver and the co-drivers will be announced at a later date.
