Something worries Sainz, Roma and Ford: there is a recurring problem because of a small piece

“You can’t imagine what a day I’ve had,” said Nani Roma as he reached the end of stage 1 of the Dakar 2025. “There was a moment when we kept thinking we were going to stop. We had an oil alarm, a serious problem, and in the end we decided to stop to call, but we said: ‘they will tell us to pull over this. break.’ So we pushed until we thought we might stop. All day there was an alarm, and obviously we lost power, because the temperature of the engine was dropping,” said the Folgueroles about the shrinking of his Ford.

In it Dakarproblems naturally arise and must be dealt with. However, what worries Ford is that the failure that Nani suffered with his car in stage 1 is something that has already happened in the tests and was repeated in the Dakar. But be careful: this does not mean that they cannot win or that it will happen again. Although this is not a good sign.

Ford worked against the clock and put all possible resources into creating a competitive, fast and reliable car to tackle the toughest races in the world with the aim of winning in its first year. And indeed, Nani Rome He had already tested it early in its development by creating some jumps himself using a machine at the headquarters of M-Sport for “destroy it” and see if they will handle the transmissions and everything else. And from there, many things emerged that Ford quickly changed and that served to greatly improve the vehicle from the base.

But as Sainz and Roma already explained in the run-up to the race, “it’s the small details that worry”the small pipes, small pieces, that may have escaped the complete analysis carried out by the mechanics and engineers, and did not complete distances as long as, for example, this stage 2 of the Dakar, which is more than 900 kilometers , without doing a check in between. Reliability, no matter how small a part, is Ford’s main challenge in this first year and, in that sense, the challenge is huge.

In this case, the issue is the problem of the oil alarm, something caused by a small piece of small value, which can cost about 5 euros.

The Ford Raptor T1+ is very competitive, but it remains to be seen if this problem will appear again in one of its cars and if, if it happens again, the driver in question can save the day as Nani did in episode 1. This is normal in a new project. No one has managed to win the Dakar with a new car and the goal is huge. And in that context, it’s logical that something so small can be a concern, although no one can guarantee that it will happen again.