This is what it feels like inside a top class Dakar car: MD enters Isidre Esteve’s Toyota

Isidre Esteve He continues to break barriers with his example. After 10 dakars on the motorcycle, on 2007 He suffered a fall while competing that caused a spinal injury that led him to a wheelchair. After this, and after a big fight, this January he will reach the tenth Dakar by car, the twentieth in total between two and four wheels. What he does is exemplary. He is fighting the same rules as everyone else despite not being able to use his legs (he has no feeling from the chest down). And despite this, he competes in the highest category of the Dakar with the aim of being among the top 20.

But one does not know what Isidre is experiencing inside his car, the Repsol Toyota Rally Team’s Toyota Hilux T1+until you experience it on your own skin. MD sits next to Isidre in Morocco before Dakar 2025 to really understand what is Oliana piloting through a special and adapted steering wheel that allows you to do everything with your hands to fight the best.

MD has ridden with many other legends on different machines. In Alonso in a Honda street in Estoril, with Latvala in a WRC on dirt, with Ken Block in a WRC on a mountain stretch of asphalt, and much more. But it was a strange feeling to be with Isidre.

It happened on a stretch of dirt and rocks in the middle of the desert, about half an hour from Marrakeshwith a route of about 6 km.

Piloting with just your hands

The roar of the engine is impressive in a cabin where the co-pilot is very cramped. And when leaving, the ground traction and acceleration of Toyota He glued the two to the chair. But two things stand out above the rest from the start. First, the tremendous speed and coordination with which Isidre moves his hands continuously to turn the steering wheel, accelerate with the palm of his hand on the inner surface of the steering wheel and how he brakes by pulling the ring on the back of the steering wheel with his left hand .

All this, while downshifting with your right hand on the center lever while turning the steering wheel. A perfect choreography, a magical dance of hands that makes the windshield look even more surprising and stunning and see that the car moves at full speed between stones of all sizes and many ruts.

The most surprising thing from the cabin

Exactly, the second point that gets more attention is the way in which it attacks holes and grooves. Isidre approaches an important sinkhole. Naturally, MD prepares to brake by touching the ground. But, surprisingly, that braking doesn’t come. It’s worth noting how the suspensions replicate the big drop in the terrain so that Isidre can keep his hand on the gas as if the road is flat. And so is the traction and stability when falling after a jump where it’s impossible not to scream.

In the ‘kopi’ seat he never stops jumping. There will come a time when you can’t help but think about it the difficulty of the co-pilot in reading the roadbook and interpreting the vignettes and directions to follow to give directions to Isidre in a constant roller coaster of sensationsfor 400 or 500 km on the same day. And the physical strain of spending 6 or 7 hours like this, non-stop, in the deserts of Saudi Arabia for an Isidre who never stops fighting only and exclusively with his arms.

A smile that says it all

With that reflection, when the car warned with beeps that it was traveling at the maximum speed allowed (170 km/h), MD looked at Isidre. He had been driving for a while, in the heat, and the logical thing was for fatigue to take over his face. None of the kind. His face said it all. He was just quiet, driving and smiling. His appearance was not deceiving. i am happy It was Isidre. a happy man who continues to enjoy the sport of his life as always, putting aside his disability, breaking barriers, fighting like no other, with a smile from ear to ear. Happiness in its purest form.