Dakar 2024: Ignacio Casale's New Challenge and Expectations in Saudi Arabia

2023-12-14 18:18:53

The experienced Chilean pilot Ignacio Casaletogether with his navigator Álvaro León, is about to embark Saudi Arabia to face the 46th edition of the nut test more extreme of the world: the Rally Dakar.

This competition will be held for the fifth consecutive time on Saudi soil, specifically from January 5 to 19 with a prologue, 12 stages, 14 days of racing, 5,000 kilometers to complete and a 60% absolutely new routes.

Casale will mark his fifteenth consecutive participation in the Dakar in 2024, consolidating himself as the Chilean of longest journey in the so-called ‘most difficult race in the world’. And he has already made history with three titles -all in quads- (2014, 2018 and 2020) and two second places (2013 and 2017).

The nicknamed ‘dog’member of Team X-Raid Yamahatook the time to speak with BioBioChile about his new challenge in the most famous rally on the planet.

Regarding the expectations of what will be his second consecutive participation in UTV, 2023 ended in the tenth place the general, the Chilean declared that “they are high. We want to finish the race within the first three. We know we are capable, we have the car, we have the team and we have the crew. “I fully trust Álvaro, who is my navigator.”

“I trust myself and I think we can have a very good race if we follow the strategy we must follow. We have been arriving in Morocco, where we had a good race (4th), We touch the podium and I think that with small changes they have made to the car in recent months, after Morocco, we will be able to do even better in the race,” he added.

Regarding the sensations of being the Chilean who has participated in the most Dakar races, also with the greatest number of titles along with Francisco ‘Chaleco’ López (3), Ignacio indicated that “the truth is that when I started my first Dakar in 2010, I I never imagined that I was going to be where I am now.”

“I was always very hungry to be a professional driver, to represent Chile, to have my brands and to be able to race around the world. But I never imagined to be the Chilean driver with the most Dakar races”he added.

Along the same lines, the 36-year-old Santiago native indicated that these achievements came “thanks to my perseverance, the hunger I had and to the work I did without stopping. Since I started I always wanted to be where I am, but it hasn’t been easy. In Chile it is very difficult to be an athlete”.

“Many doors are closed to you here… Private companies are very important in our sports careers, but Chile is a country where it is very difficult be an athlete,” he continued.

On a personal level, Casale indicated that “like many athletes, I have been able to manage and to be here racing in my 15th Dakar. I want to enjoy it as if it were the last and I am sure that if I go out and enjoy the race the results will come by themselves.”

“I have made changes, mainly in driving, and I no longer run with so much pressure As in recent years, that pressure meant that he did not obtain good results. I hope that this style is beneficial and that I continue to represent Chile for many more years. To Ignacio Casale you have a lot of gasoline left still,” he added.

Finally, the also champion of the Moroccan (2019), Qatar (2016) and Atacama (2015 and 2017) quad rallies revealed to this medium the why his nickname ‘dog’for which he has become known in the nut world.

“A journalist called me ‘dog’. I could tell a much more entertaining or far-fetched story, but that’s because I I’m very bad at remembering names”said the driver of the Challenger Side by Side category.

“I tell everyone ‘hello dog’, ‘how are you dog’. When the Dakar was held here in Chile, there were more than 30-40 journalists and I didn’t remember their names, so in the end I treated them all as ‘dog’ and that’s how I won a stage and I found out from the press that the ‘Casale dog’ He won his first stage in the Dakar. I took it well, my family doesn’t tell me that way, but the fans and journalists do,” he concluded.