2023 Dakar Rally: Alexandre Giroud goes back-to-back in Quads

In 2022, Alexandre Giroud and Francisco Moreno Flores finished first and second in the Dakar Rally‘s Quad category. Fast forward to 2023 and even a tougher course did not change the top two.

The reigning World Rally-Raid Champion, Giroud defeated his fellow Drag’on Rally rider Moreno by forty-three minutes, making it a much closer result than last year when he won by over two hours. Giroud is the first back-to-back Quad winner since Alejandro Patronelli won in 2011 and 2012. The Frenchman kept a clean sheet better than his country in the FIFA World Cup Final as he never surrendered the overall lead across all fourteen stages. Ironically, the football analogy means the Dakar Quad 1–2 was an inverse of said match as Moreno is Argentinian.

It was not a “perfect” sweep as he did not win every stage, but winning the first four legs built up a massive advantage over Moreno. When Moreno broke the streak by taking Stage #5, he was still forty minutes back.

2021 Rally winner Manuel Andújar joined the fight when he bookended the cancelled Stage #7 with two wins, the latter of which saw an uncharacteristically difficult day for Moreno that caused Giroud to pull ahead by over an hour. However, Andújar fell out due to mechanical problems during the Empty Quarter Marathon.

Laisvydas Kancius and Marcelo Medeiros won every leg in the second half, with the former notching two and the latter enjoyed four in a row. Kancius could have had a third victory in Stage #8 but it evapourated when his Quad broke down. However, an early crash for Medeiros and retirement for Kancius respectively relegated them to ninth and seventh in the overall.

After what he called an “odyssey” of a Rally and “the toughest I have ever raced,” Pablo Copetti joined Giroud and Flores on the podium, marking his second top-three finish after placing third in 2021. As Giroud and Moreno are not competing for the W2RC, Copetti is the Quad points leader exiting Dakar.

Carlos Verza finished eighth as the only Quad rider competing in Malle Moto, an otherwise Rally2-only category where riders may not have assistance crews. He placed fourteenth among the fifteen Malle Moto finishers.

Quad overall finishers

Finish	Number	Competitor	Team	Time	Margin
1	151	Alexandre Giroud*	Drag’on Rally Team	56:44:30	Leader
2	154	Francisco Moreno Flores*	Drag’on Rally Team	57:27:41	+ 43:11
3	163	Pablo Copetti	Del Amo Motorsports	58:37:25	+ 1:52:55
4	153	Juraj Varga	Varga Motorsport	59:35:52	+ 2:52:22
5	166	Giovanni Enrico*	Enrico Racing Team	61:41:41	+ 4:57:11
6	164	Toni Vingut*	Visit Sant Antoni – Ibiza	65:22:32	+ 8:38:02
7	162	Laisvydas Kancius	Story Racing SRO	76:00:23	+ 19:15:53
8	158	Carlos Alejandro Verza	Verza Rally Team	81:35:00	+ 24:50:30
9	159	Marcelo Medeiros*	Taguatur Racing Team	86:47:55	+ 30:03:25
10	169	Alejandro Fantoni*	Drag’on Rally Team	94:47:16	+ 38:02:46

* – Not competing in World Rally-Raid Championship

Overall winners

Class	Number	Competitor	Team	Time
T1	200	Nasser Al-Attiyah	Toyota Gazoo Racing	45:03:15
T2	250	Ronald Basso*	Team Land Cruiser Toyota Auto Body	107:39:42
T3	303	Austin Jones	Red Bull Off-Road Junior Team	51:55:53
T4	428	Eryk Goczał	EnergyLandia Rally Team	53:10:14
T5	502	Janus van Kasteren	Boss Machinery Team de Rooy IVECO	54:03:33
RallyGP	47	Kevin Benavides	Red Bull KTM Factory Racing	44:27:20
Rally2	17	Romain Dumontier	Team Dumontier Racing	47:03:58
Malle Moto	40	Charan Moore*	HT Rally Raid Husqvarna Racing	52:24:42
Quad	151	Alexandre Giroud*	Drag’on Rally Team	56:44:30
Classic	778	Juan Morera*	Toyota Classic	428 points