Sebastien Loeb after 13 Dakar punctures: Cars now extremely robust, tyres the weak link

Sebastien Loeb believes tyres have become the decisive weak point in the Dakar Rally after his 2026 campaign was derailed by a string of punctures.

World Rally Championship legend Loeb arrived in Saudi Arabia with a renewed hope of scoring that elusive Dakar win, having failed to do so in his previous nine participations.

But the Frenchman’s challenge unravelled on Stage 3 when he ran out of spare tyres despite driving at “20% of the car’s potential”, leaving him “almost at a standstill”.

Punctures continued to disrupt his campaign, but he gradually recovered in the second week, capitalising on navigation errors from Ford drivers and the technical issues that struck Toyota’s lead runner Henk Lategan.

Ultimately, he finished the rally in fourth, missing out to Ford’s Mattias Ekstrom by 37 seconds for the final podium position. While reliability has historically played a major role in the Dakar, Loeb believes the equation has now shifted.

“Well, the problem is that today’s cars are extremely powerful, extremely robust, and very similar in performance, so to make a difference, you have to push hard,” he told the media including Motorsport.com.

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“Overall, cars are reliable and solid. The only thing that breaks down is the tyres, actually. Otherwise, there’s not much that breaks on cars. You can drive very fast, but you have to avoid getting a puncture, and that’s what I didn’t manage to do this year.”

Loeb’s frustration stemmed from the fact that the punctures he suffered were unpredictable, especially as he traversed through rocky terrain in the opening week.

BFGoodrich changed the internal structure of its cross-country tyres this year, with the goal of reducing damage to the tread surface. It was actually successful in that regard, but the change in compound had the inadvertent effect of making the sidewall more susceptible to damage.

“It would be good to improve them,” Loeb said of the tyres. “This year, we had very difficult terrain in terms of rocks and so on. We have cars that are quite heavy, extremely sturdy and very powerful, so at some point, our limit in terms of breakage is the tyres. 

“It’s really difficult to find that limit, to know how much pressure to put in so as not to get a puncture. Sometimes you drive flat out over the rocks and you don’t get a puncture; sometimes you drive slowly and you get a puncture. It’s very hard to find the right pace, and I don’t even think there really is one.”

Loeb’s team-mate Nasser Al-Attiyah suffered relatively few punctures and drove steadily to chalk up his sixth Dakar win.

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“Maybe we should ask Nasser how he does it, because he gets fewer punctures. We can see it, we know very well that we need to do […] on the tyres for the coming years,” said Loeb.

Apart from a power steering issue during the second week, which he had to repair himself due to the marathon stage rules, Loeb avoided any serious mechanical problems, reinforcing his views that tyres are now the limiting factor.

“Given what we ask of our cars, it’s inevitable that something will break. It’s part of the game, it’s still a motor sport,” he said.

“Considering what we put them through, they’re extremely solid. Apart from that [power steering issue], it’s true that we haven’t had any problems, whether with the fans, the wishbones, the bits and pieces, the tie rods, everything that used to break, it hasn’t broken. So the team has really done a good job.”

While Loeb is yet to add a Dakar win to his nine WRC titles, he said finishing on the cusp of the podium wasn’t a disaster for him.

“We have no regrets, we tried,” he told L’Equipe. “We know that Ekstrom is formidable in this type of sprint stage – he has been throughout the rally. So we tried, we had a good stage, not too many mistakes, but it wasn’t enough.

“Overall, we can’t regret much. Finishing fourth isn’t too bad. In any case, victory had been out of reach for a few days, so third or fourth isn’t a disaster.”

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– The Motorsport.com Team