Cristina Gutiérrez becomes second female Dakar Rally winner after Jutta Kleinschmidt in 2001

The race for female victors in motorsport continues as Cristina Gutiérrez wins the Dakar Rally.

George Brownless
19th February 2024
Image Credit: EKSRX. Flickr
Cristina Gutiérrez has become only the second ever female Dakar Rally winner, after taking victory in the Lightweight Prototype Class - completed with her co-driver Pablo Moreno Huete, in just under 54 hours.

This is the first time since 2001 that a woman has taken victory in the Dakar Rally. Jutta Kleinschmidt from Germany won that year in the car category, and remains the only German to have won the event. Gutiérrez has been involved in the category since 2022, but has been racing in Dakar since 2017. Despite not winning any individual stages this year, she was able to take the win with the overall fastest time. Previously in 2023, she finished 3rd overall with 2 stage wins. She also took a stage win in the SSV class in 2021.

The race itself takes place over 12 stages, this year, taking place in Saudi Arabia. Gutiérrez took the lead 130km into the final stage, overcoming the existing deficit of half an hour, over 2nd place finishers Mitchell Guthrie and Kellon Walch. Guthrie and Walch had been leading the event since stage 6, but ended up finishing 36 minutes behind Gutiérrez and Huete. Guthrie’s final day was impacted by a turbocharger problem early on, which allowed Gutiérrez to take the lead, with a gearbox failure adding to Guthrie’s misery.

While Guthrie and Walch were certainly unfortunate on the final day, Gutiérrez, alongside Pablo, more than earned their victory.

Stage 4 caused the pair a lot of trouble, and resulted in them receiving 15 minutes of penalties. Failure of some of the car’s electronics meant that they lost front-wheel drive and couldn’t mark waypoints correctly. It left them one hour behind at the end of the stage. However, Gutiérrez was able to make the time up gradually, all the way till the final stage, taking the lead at that 130km mark, with just 200km to go.

For Gutiérrez, the win in Dakar means she is the first person to claim both a Dakar win and an Extreme E championship. She took the title alongside Sébastien Loeb in 2022 for Lewis Hamilton’s team “TeamX44”. In 2024, she has joined McLaren’s Extreme E team. Extreme E is a rallying championship, taking place at remote venues across the globe with electric vehicles, promoting sustainable rally driving. The rules also mandate that each team has both a female and male driver.

Following on from her success this year, Gutiérrez will be participating in Dakar again in 2025, this time teaming up with Dacia’s brand new entry and technical partners Aramco and Prodrive. She’ll also be racing alongside Sébastien Loeb and Nasser Al-Attiyah, in the pursuit of victory once more, no longer in the challenger class, but the main category of Dakar.

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