The iconic desert marathon begins on Saturday on the sand dunes of Saudi Arabia. The two-week event ends on 17 January.
Both Serderidis and Munster are familiar faces from the top class of the World Rally Championship. Serderidis has contested selected WRC rounds in recent years with his privately owned Ford Puma Rally1, while Munster spent the past two seasons as a full-time M-Sport driver.
This year Munster is no longer part of the M-Sport line-up, but he will still contest the season-opening Rally Monte Carlo in Serderidis’s Puma. Before that, however, he faces a completely different challenge.
Munster will act as Serderidis’s co-driver on the Dakar. Last month the pair warmed up by tackling the East African Safari Classic Rally together, covering around 3,200 kilometres.
In the Dakar, Serderidis will compete in the car category with an M-Sport Ford Raptor T1+. The Belgium-based businessman admits that the biggest question mark sits beside him – the rookie navigator Munster.
“When Fred (Miclotte) told me he had a client for Monte Carlo and could no longer go to Arabia, I had to choose. Either I paid for the services of an experienced co-driver I didn’t know, or I went with Greg, with whom everything went extremely well on Safari, both in the car and outside it.”
“Of course, it’s not the same. At the beginning we’ll struggle a bit because Grégoire knows nothing about navigation. We will get lost. But I’m going there mainly to have fun. My co-driver is very intelligent, very ‘2.0’. I’m sure he will learn very quickly,” Serderidis told Belgian outlet Autotrends.
Serderidis has never contested the Dakar before, but last year he entered three cross-country events with the Ford Raptor. In the Portuguese round of the World Rally-Raid Championship he finished 13th.
The Dakar, however, presents a challenge unlike anything Serderidis and Munster have previously faced. During the two-week event, competitive distance totals an enormous 4,840 kilometres, with the full route reaching nearly 8,000 km.
Their objective is simply to reach the finish.
“We’ve received good advice and we’re not going to do anything crazy. My main concern is navigation. But Greg has taken an accelerated course with Alex Haro, Nani Roma’s co-driver. He taught him the basics. Of course, once you’re out in the field, it’s always a bit different,” Serderidis noted.
Several favourites
A total of 80 cars are entered for the Dakar. Serderidis and Munster are not among the favourites, but the entry list features several rally stars.
Nine-time World Rally Champion Sébastien Loeb starts his tenth Dakar this year. He has never won the event, so the Frenchman, now driving for Dacia, will accept nothing less than victory.
Two-time WRC champion Carlos Sainz is chasing his sixth Dakar win and, like Serderidis, competes with Ford machinery.
World RX champion Mattias Ekström finished third in last year’s Dakar and, with a clean run, could again fight near the front.
Last year’s winner, Yazeed Al-Rajhi, suffered a serious accident in Jordan in April but returned to competition in September.
Other favourites include Nasser Al-Attiyah, Nani Roma, Henk Lategan, Toby Price, Lucas Moraes and Seth Quintero.
The Dakar begins on Saturday with a short 23-kilometre prologue. On Sunday, the first full stage covers 305 kilometres.
