Marc Marquez to race the Dakar Rally?

Bruno Gomes

January 11, 2019

Marc Marquez | Photo credits: Grid Oto

We’ve seen just how tough the Dakar Rally might be for men and machines alike, but the appeal of entering the toughest off road race in the world might be too strong for Marc Marquez to resist. The Spanish MotoGP champion is enjoying a well-deserved Winter break, but he still follows motorcycle racing every day, and has hinted that we might see Marc Marquez racing the Dakar Rally!

Using his personal blog to keep his fans up to date with what he’s doing, the Repsol Honda rider and five times MotoGP champion has shown throughout the years he is a fan of off road racing on bikes.

Marc Marquez not only won the famous Superprestigio Dirt Track race in front of professional dirt track riders, but he’s also entered and won regional motocross races from his hometown Cervera. But he’s now looking for a bigger challenge: The Dakar.

Marquez says we will still need to wait many years before we can see him racing the Dakar, because all his focus is on continuing his domination of the MotoGP championship, “But it’s not a too much of a dream to say I might take on a Dakar. It’s a really tough race that you must need to be well prepared. To enter a Dakar, it’s not like a race on Sunday. There’s a lot of preparation behind: physical, navigation and technical…. To go there you really need to have everything planned out carefully”, says Marquez.

But if Marc Marquez would enter the Dakar, would he race on bikes or cars?

“If I was going to the Dakar, for sure I would do it on a bike. Bikes have always been my passion. But if I raced with a car, I would take my brother Alex with me, it would be fun to see how we would handle it. But to be honest, I would need to prepare myself really hard for that”.

Marc Marquez continues his shoulder injury recover plan, and should be ready to participate on the first MotoGP pre-season test session in Sepang, Malaysia, in February.