– 5th comic from the series « Memories from 20 years of X-raid »
– Yazeed Al-Rajhi, the MINI JCW Buggy and the Pacific Ocean.
Yazeed Al-Rajhi and Timo Gottschalk caused one of the most curious situations in Dakar history on the fifth stage of the 2018 Dakar. Part of the special stage led directly along the Pacific Ocean. Al-Rajhi was doing well on the beach section when a wave caught his MINI JCW Buggy. It pulled the desert racer into the sea.
The drivers quickly jumped out of the MINI and secured it with a tow rope. Team-mates Boris Garafulic and Filipe Palmeiro pulled the buggy out of the Pacific a little later. Mikko Hirvonen then towed it to the finish. In the evening, the mechanics of the X-raid team managed to get the MINI JCW Buggy ready for the next day.
The MINI JCW Buggy was the first time X-raid had built a rear-wheel drive vehicle instead of a four-wheel drive. A few years after the curious incident, it won the Dakar twice in a row: in 2020 with Carlos Sainz and in 2021 with Stéphane Peterhansel.