Cristina Gutierrez swaps cars to go all out at Dakar 2023

Cristina Gutierrez officially announced her participation in Dakar 2023 this Tuesday. This is her third time in the lightweight prototype (T3) category and she will once again join Red Bull. But it comes with a fundamental change: a new car brand and new prototypes. Cristina Gutierrez will no longer drive the OT3 that caused many mechanical problems for the women of Burgos in previous editions and the current World Cup, but the Spaniard will be behind the wheels of Can-Am due to her ties to Red Bull and the company to compete in her new Red Bull Can-Am Factory team.

Dakar 2023 will be Cristina Gutierrez’s seventh participation in the Dakar, breaking many molds and records. Last year (2021) she became the first woman to win her FIA Cross-Country World Championship, a huge success that put her on a long list in both the T3 (side-by-side prototype) and car categories. In her T3 class at Dakar, she became the first Spanish woman to win a Dakar, Jutta became the only woman other than Kleinschmidt to win a stage of the world’s toughest test, and the first to win a Dakar. became a woman. class. Previously, she made the leap to Side by Side in 2017, when she became the first Spanish woman to complete the Dakar by car at the age of 25, and then she made the leap to Side by Side after finishing three times in a row.

Now look for the hard part. With a prototype that should be more reliable than the previous year, Christina can aim to win the historic Dakar in a category where parity will be huge.