As Motorsport.com reports, Fernando Alonso has secured terms to stay in Formula 1 for 2027 while simultaneously persuading Aston Martin to back a brand-new assault on the Dakar Rally. The deal itself was supposedly agreed back in August, though the news has only just leaked through Spanish media outlets following cryptic remarks made by the driver during the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia last weekend about upcoming surprises.
This will be a return to the dunes for the two-time Le Mans winner, who previously finished 13th in the 2020 event with Toyota. Alonso has long chased varied challenges outside of Formula 1, famously taking a sabbatical between 2018 and 2021 to compete in the Indy 500 and conquer the Le Mans 24 Hours. Speaking on that philosophy, he noted that he needed to step away from grand prix racing to become a more complete driver by learning from specialists in other disciplines.
Under the hood, the project relies heavily on proven machinery. According to the reports, Alonso will drive an Aston Martin-branded car prepared by Prodrive and built upon the foundations of the Dacia Sandrider, which recently triumphed in the hands of Nasser Al-Attiyah and co-driver Fabian Lurquin. That machine itself evolved from the Prodrive Hunter project. Intriguingly, one plan on the table is to badge and style the new machine as the Dreadnought, drawing direct inspiration from a virtual Aston Martin concept vehicle featured in the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 4 videogame.
Prodrive holds deep historical ties to the British manufacturer, given that founder David Richards previously served as chairman from 2007 to 2013 and guided their successful GT and sportscar campaigns. Initial testing of the Sandrider base is expected to kick off in the coming weeks. Furthermore, Marc Coma—the five-time motorcycle category winner who guided Alonso through his 2020 debut—is anticipated to return as his co-driver. Prodrive is reportedly eyeing a wider squad around the project, with both Al-Attiyah and Sebastien Loeb under consideration for seats, though official confirmation is still pending.
Questions also linger over where the rally will actually be held. While the FIA and organiser ASO currently schedule the event to run in Saudi Arabia from 1-15 January over 13 stages and 5,320 kilometres of competitive running, geopolitical security concerns in the Middle East have cast doubt on the location. Contingency plans are reportedly in motion to shift the rally to Morocco for a more compact event spanning around eight stages, though nothing has been finalized yet.
