Summarize

Century Racing commenced its 2023 Dakar Rally attack with a two-wheel drive 1-2 for its brand new Factory team CR6-T rally-raid race cars. South African crew Brian Baragwanath and Leonard Cremer led Frenchmen Mathieu Serradori and Loic Minaudier home.

The team continues to develop the all-new biturbo 2.9-litre Audi RS4 V6 powered CR6-T into the early days of the Dakar, but both drivers emerged happy from the prologue. “It’s great to be back at the Dakar and we are very happy to be here,” Brian Baragwanath admitted. “Today’s tight Prologue favoured the 4x4s, but it was still fun in two wheel drive.

“We are still working on a few tuning aspects. “For instance, we are losing out a little on pull away, but we are looking at ways to solve that around turbo lag and traction gains.” Brian is also happy to be over a little personal scare. “I was bitten by a spider on my hand back home and it was very painful on the flight over, but the infection is gone, and I am feeling much better now.”

“Our Century Racing Factory entries ended first and second among the two-wheel drive cars in today’s Prologue,” Julian Hardy confirmed. “We still have work to do on the electronics. Gear shift in lower gears was our biggest challenge. “The engine was losing turbo boost in between shifts, so we will go testing that again today.

“As much as we tried to tick all the boxes over the past few months, it just wasn't possible to get it all perfect. “So, every kilometre raced over the next few days will also be used to keep on developing the systems. “Toyota and other teams also did much more driving than a normal shakedown, so we're not the exception. 

“We have made good progress with ride height settings since we arrived here in Saudi Arabia, but looking at the track today, it was very much WRC/4wd territory,” Hardy concluded. “We used first gear many times on the slow track and that definitely favours four wheel drive. “Still, both cars are well placed for tomorrow, so all good!”

Baragwanath and Serradori ended up 16th and 19th overall, with the rest of the older Corvette V8-powered Century CR6s in pursuit. Astara crews, Oscar Fuertes and Diego Vallejo ended 24th with teammates Laia Sanz and Fabrizio Gerini 27th.  

Multi-talented Dutch twins, Tim and Tom Coronel came in 29th, Spanish former MotoGP winner Carlos Checa and Marc Sola’s Astara car was 31st with Dakar rookie French crew Yannick and Valérie Panagiotis 32nd. Two more Century rookie crews, Sergio Vallejo and Mario Gozalez were 41st and Dutch duo Michel Kremer and Thomas De Bois 49th.