The condition set by Sainz to sign for Ford and continue in the Dakar: “When Carlos says that to you…”

The last two titles of Dakar of Carlos Sainz incomprehensible without Joan Navarro (September 10, 1985, Deltebre), Carlos Sainz’s car engineer at Ford. Since 2019, the Catalan has been inseparable from the ‘Matador’, a young engineer full of talent and love for the machine that is perfectly connected to the Madrid driver. Carlos, among many others, as Nani said Rome, “He’s a motorsports sufferer”perfectionist, methodical and never stops thinking about even the smallest details to improve his car. And besides his co-driver Lucas Cruz, he found in Joan Navarro the best person to accompany him on his journey to Dakar, someone with the same spirit, with whom he was connected from the beginning, and who speaks the same language of race as the four-time Dakar champion.

Carlos won his first Dakar title in 2020, in his second year with Joan, and the Catalan couldn’t hold back his tears. Little did he know that after that his future was assured next to ‘Matador’. When Dakar 2021 ended, Joan surprised Carlos. “I thought: ‘When Carlos finishes his time at Mini, he will go somewhere else with another engineer, which is normal.’ But when he was going to Audi he said to me: ‘I want you to come with me’”. And he accepted without hesitation, a project that also included X-Raid, its structure at the time. But what came years later left Joan even more speechless. This happened when he won the Dakar with Audi in the third and final year of the German project.

“Very cool. When the Dakar was over I didn’t know what I was going to do. And the week after winning the Dakar, we started talking and he told me: ‘There’s the M-Sport team, which is entering with the factory-official Ford. This is a project that motivates me. If it’s okay with you, let’s take a look at the project in England, north of Manchester, and see what we think. You don’t have to say yes or no, just go see him,’” he proposed. And then, he said something that Joan will never forget: ‘The condition is that you and Lucas (Cruz) go with me, because of my age, I don’t think I can do it anymore’”. Because of this, the 39-year-old engineer was speechless. “We have been together for many years, we get along wellwe understand each other and I want you to come with me. This is one of my priorities and I will tell Ford and M-Sport.”Carlos added.

“If I said no, I don’t know if Carlos will go, but he said there is a very high possibility that he won’t sign.Lucas and I. For me it was brutal, a huge injection of motivation. When someone like Carlos tells you that, you don’t think about it. I’ve been working at X-Raid for 10 years, I’m in Germany, I know everyone, but I did it because Carlos told me. “I can’t refuse.”Joan remembered.

Method, perfection and details

The Catalan engineer highlights an important point: his 62 years, Carlos Sainz He is still the same pilot who is very dedicated to improving every detail. The most obvious example, the tests. For Sainz and the team, it is important to ride before this Dakar.

“We have done around 15,000 km of testing, which is around 3 dakars in timed trials. I have never done so many tests in my 12 years in Dakar. We said:’It’s February, if we want to win the Dakar, we have to try.’ We start in April. Every week we do tests, 8 days throughout the month, two days per pilot. Something he insisted on. It said: ‘I don’t want to go there and waste time. If I go to win. And to win you have to do it’”he said, a manifestation of the ambition and spirit of the Spaniard’s victory, again involved in body and soul, as in everything he does.

“I was calmer when Carlos was riding the test, because on the days he wasn’t there, he called me every half hour. I was in charge of the ‘run plan’ for the exam, organized what we had to try, and he called me from home to say: ‘How are you? What are you trying? And when will he come out to shoot? Will it arrive in 40 minutes? Well, I’ll call you in 50’. He called again in 50 minutes: ‘What did he say? did you like it? Did it go well? How many kilometers have you done?’ It is consistent. It’s like he’s there. On the day of the test when he was away, we could talk for 1 hour between 8 or 9 different calls. But it’s also very good for me because I ask him things and he gives me his opinion if I have questions. “Very constructive,” he said.

“With it, you make things better. His professionalism, the method he has and the fact that he always wants to improve is something that contributed a lot to me, it made me grow as a person. And obviously, I became a bit like him, very demanding of myself, wanting to be better every day and perfect everything, because at the highest level you should be like that,” he explained.

“He never stops thinking. Stay the same. A few days of the Christmas holidays we are still looking at the stages of Morocco. People think about Christmas and eat nougat, but not him. It’s nice, because we love what we do,” he says.

Dakar 2025, finally, did not go as desired, with Carlos leaving after stage 2. The clearest sign that Carlos will continue after abandoning before stage 3, is that Joan will remain in bivouac to continue learning about the car and see how to improve it. And Carlos himself assured on Instagram that he will return in 2026. “You won’t retire until you win with Ford? This will be the cherry on top. I think this is their goal, to win the Dakar with 5 different manufacturers to close the stage with Ford.a brand with which he won his first race in the World Rally Championship. Probably. Carlos was only there for a short time because he is very strong, he is like a bull physically, he is very fast and I hope that will be the case.”he pointed out.

Joan wasn’t too sure about the Audi win; Sainz, yes

In 2024, Carlos Sainz, Lucas Cruzwith his engineer Joan Navarrothey conquered the Dakar for the first time with an electrified vehicle. They achieved this after three long years of work, knowing the complexity of the challenge with a technologically very complex car, with thousands of sensors. If someone gets off, the car can stop. The challenge is enormous.

“It’s a very complicated project, but it’s an accepted challenge. The bigger the goal, the more it motivates you and the harder you make it, and that’s something that Carlos also gave me.Joan said in this regard that it is very difficult to achieve the crown in a project in which the Catalan and the Madrid native are especially focused on exploiting their experience “in chassis, suspension, logistical preparation, strategy, testing and racing level “.

“If I thought it was possible to win in Audi? I saw it as very complicated, it was not all in me, because it was so complicated in terms of reliability… and we had the weight handicap and I didn’t see it clearly. Even when we were leading the rally last year I thought: one day something will happen. And we checked everything to the maximum, but there are so many things that are very complicated.” In that aspect, Joan considered that Carlos was once again the key to the details, so no one failed to help. And most of all, it highlights the optimism that Carlos has always possessed. He always believed it was possible.

“Carlos is sure. He was very clear about it. Carlos is very good at technology and almost like an engineer, But I knew more details about the car and I said: ‘Ugh, the probability of this failure is quite high …’, I thought.”.

“’Well, we will do well. It is better for it to happen now than for us to happen in Dakar,’ he said. And it’s true. We had a problem before the prologue stage and had to open the gas tank. And Carlos said the same. He is always optimistic and the result was good,” added Navarro, Sainz’s right hand man. They want to win together again.