Yamaha

Not so long ago the profile of the average rally-raid car competitor was decidedly middle-aged. But that was before the explosion of the T3 and T4 categories turned all that on its head. Now these categories are heaving with young, super-fast talent, like Portuguese youngster Joao Ferreira. Joao made his cross-country debut back in 2019 in the T2 production class before getting behind the wheel of a T1 Toyota Hilux in 2021. From there he migrated to an X-Raid Mini with which he won the 2022 European Baja championship by a slim margin at the very last round. Now he is set to join the army of ‘twentysomethings’ fighting it out in the Dakar T3 class aboard the X-Raid developed, Yamaha powered YXZ1000R Turbo Prototype SxS. As both he and his car are making their Dakar debut, logically they have to be considered as outsiders, but clearly with both having so much potential you just can’t rule them out. Particularly as in the ‘passenger’ seat will be sitting the vastly experienced, ‘X-Raid approved’ Filipe Palmeiro.