Carlos Sainz receives a visit from his son in Saudi Arabia, where the 2023 Dakar Rally has just started.
Carlos Sainz Jr. has taken advantage of the break between Formula 1 seasons to travel to Saudi Arabia, where the Dakar Rally has just started, and support his father, who this year faces his fifteenth participation in the toughest rally in the world. Sainz Jr. did not travel to the Arab country alone, but he did so accompanied by his mother, Reyes.
The start of the 2023 Dakar has been somewhat different from the previous ones, since it started on December 31 with a short prologue stage, and this forced the participants to celebrate New Year’s Eve in the camp with the race already underway. In previous editions, although they were already concentrated in the country, the test had still begun, and that surely gave it another atmosphere.
Taking advantage of the fact that the ‘bivouac’ of the first days is located in the Sea Camp, a ‘comfortable’ complex considering that the rest of the race will be in the middle of the desert, near Yanbu, on the shores of the Red Sea, part of the The Sainz family decided to go to the rally where El Matador fights for his fourth ‘touareg’ with the revolutionary electrified Audi RS Q e-tron.
Sainz Jr., although he passed discreetly through the camp, did not hesitate to approach the Audi with which his father competes… and even got on the driver’s seat. As curious as ever, the man from Madrid was able to discover first-hand what a Dakar racing car is like… and surely if he had been given the opportunity to test it, he would have done so.
The Sainz, father and son, have always given each other their utmost support. Carlos Senior accompanies Sainz Jr. whenever he can in Formula 1, although the calendar, which in 2023 will already have 24 races, does not make it easy for him. Carlos Jr. also closely follows the adventures of his father in the Dakar, although he had not had the opportunity to visit the ‘bivouac’ until now.
Despite this, as Carlos Sr. has acknowledged on numerous occasions in the past, every afternoon, at the end of each stage, the young Sainz called him to see how the day had gone, what the day’s difficulties had been… and, of course, he would give him some advice.
This time, he could have wished him the best when he stepped on the accelerator to start the first ‘real’ stage of the Dakar 2023 and the first of the year.