Mattias Ekström will join Ford’s Dakar lineup following his split from Audi last week. The two-time DTM and 2016 World Rallycross champion joins Carlos Sainz’ in moving over from the Four Rings’ rally raid program to the new M-Sport-led effort. …
Mattias Ekström will join Ford’s Dakar lineup following his split from Audi last week.
The two-time DTM and 2016 World Rallycross champion joins Carlos Sainz’ in moving over from the Four Rings’ rally raid program to the new M-Sport-led effort.
“Joining the Ford Dakar program is really exciting for me,” said Ekström. “Ford and M-Sport have built a vehicle that looks, sounds, and drives awesome and we all have a common ambition to win the Dakar Rally.
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“I have had four tries at Dakar so far and now I can say that I have some experience to be able to aim for the top. There is also a lot of knowledge and experience in the team to back up the ambition – starting with the long motorsport heritage of Ford, proven track record of M-Sport, very impressive driver line-up, smart engineers, technicians, and the rest of the team. I look forward to the first competitive outing with the Ford Raptor T1+ at Rally du Maroc and later at the Dakar Rally.
“I am in it to win it and I hope we will have very successful and great years ahead of us. I will do everything in my power to make it happen.”
The last three of Ekström’s four Dakar attempts have been with Audi, with whom he’s taken four stage wins and led a day of this year’s event before broken suspension derailed his chances of a victory.
“We have followed Mattias’ career for a long time, from his DTM days to the FIA World Rallycross, and now the Dakar Rally,” said M-Sport boss Malcolm Wilson. “He has shown fantastic speed and ability in all forms of motorsport and his performances in off-road racing have been no different.
“We are really looking forward to working with him and his co-driver Emil (Berkvist), who both will bring with them a vast array of experience.”
As well as Ekström and Sainz, the Ford lineup will also comprise Mitch Guthrie and Nani Roma in a quartet of Ford Raptor T1+s in the Saudi Arabia-based event next year.
Aside from Ford and M-Sport’s lengthy World Rally Championship tenure, Ford’s off-road credentials also includes victories in the Baja 1000 and Tass-Finke desert race.
“Bringing Mattias Ekström into the Ford Performance family is a big step forward for our Dakar program,” said Ford Performance’s global director Mark Rushbrook. “Mattias brings a wealth of experience in rally and off-road racing, and his skills add to a formidable team in the Ford Raptor T1+.
“The Dakar Rally is a test like no other, but we’re confident in our lineup.”
Mattias Ekström and Audi have parted ways after 23 years, bringing an end to one of motorsport’s longest driver-manufacturer relationships. The Swede announced the news in an emotional video on Instagram earlier today, while Audi Sport held a …
Mattias Ekström and Audi have parted ways after 23 years, bringing an end to one of motorsport’s longest driver-manufacturer relationships. The Swede announced the news in an emotional video on Instagram earlier today, while Audi Sport held a special farewell event at its Ingolstadt factory.
Ekström (pictured at left, above, after winning the 2011 Spa 24 Hours with Audi) became a factory driver with Audi in 2001 two years after winning the Swedish Touring Car Championship in a privately entered Audi A4 Quattro. He went on to win two DTM titles and the 2016 World Rallycross championship with the brand.
“Driving for Audi Sport was like a childhood dream coming true,” said Ekström. “Looking back on more than two decades with the four rings brings back many memories. I had the chance to fulfill my dreams as a kid, like racing in the DTM, winning races and titles, and developing race cars.
“Winning the DTM title in 2004 is something I will cherish forever. But it was more than just motorsport. I had the chance to meet so many interesting and talented people and attended many great events.
“Being involved with the same company for so long is quite rare in motorsport, and I am very grateful for this period of my life. I can only say thank you to everyone at Audi.”
In a near-two decade spell in DTM, Ekström made 217 starts, winning 25 times and taking 83 podiums, 20 poles, and 17 fastest laps. His first championship success came in 2004, with his second following in 2007. But while Ekström’s DTM successes will be the standout memories for many of his time with Audi, the partnership has also enabled him to showcase his versatility.
Ekström leads the way for Audi during the 2016 FIA World RX Rallycross Championship. Colin McMaster/EKS/McKlein
He left DTM after a one-off appearance in the 2017 season opener to focus on World RX, which he’d won in 2016, ending Petter Solberg’s dominance in the-then three-year-old series. Additionally, he finished runner-up a further three times, in 2017 and ’18, and 2020, when he returned after a year out of the category.
Ekström also helped Audi’s customer racing division to its first overall 24-hour race win with the R8 GT3 at the 2011 24 Hours of Spa alongside Timo Scheider and Greg Franchi. He has been part of Audi’s Dakar rally lineup for the last three years, too, winning four stages of the famed rally raid in that time, as well as spending a full day in the lead of the 2024 edition of the event.
And in 2021, he represented sister Volkswagen Group brand Cupra in Extreme E and ETCR, claiming a first podium for the brand in the off-road series, and the overall championship crown in the short-lived electric touring car series.
Ekström has been at the center of a number of Audi’s off-road efforts, including its works Dakar RS Q e-tron program. Julien Delfosse/DPPI
“We owe Mattias an immense amount, and in turn we have helped him to the greatest successes of his career,” said Audi Sport managing director Rolf Michl. “To this day, I am impressed not only by his continuous performance but also by his excellent team spirit.
“Mattias has never concentrated solely on racing. He has always helped to drive projects forward, support our developers and promote the teams he has worked with.
“With these qualities and his series of successes, he is a great role model for many international talents in motorsport. We wish him all the best for his future career.”
News of Ekström’s next steps are expected to be made public soon. He remains a part of McLaren’s Extreme E lineup, although that series remains on an indefinite hiatus following the cancellation of the final three events of the 2024 season.
NEOM McLaren sporting director Gary Paffett says that the team’s new driver pairing of Mattias Ekstrom and Cristina Gutierrez “exceeded expectations” at the Extreme E season opener in Saudi Arabia. The duo – Ekstrom the 2023 runner-up and Gutierrez …
NEOM McLaren sporting director Gary Paffett says that the team’s new driver pairing of Mattias Ekstrom and Cristina Gutierrez “exceeded expectations” at the Extreme E season opener in Saudi Arabia.
The duo – Ekstrom the 2023 runner-up and Gutierrez the 2022 champion – joined in the off-season as McLaren looked to move on from being underachievers to championship challengers, and Paffet says it was a strong start to the team’s new era.
“My overall feeling from the weekend is really positive,” he told RACER. “We knew what Mattias and Cristina could do from looking from the outside at other teams. Now we’ve got them here, they’ve certainly lived up to and in some ways exceeded expectations.
“They’ve both been incredible in the car – Cristina just with her calmness under immense pressure and her ability to fight so close to people, and the moves that she makes on track. Her racecraft is really good. And Mattias with his creativeness, as always, opens up gaps that you don’t know that are there. They’ve both really done an incredible job.”
Motorsport Images
While a podium finish on Saturday and a Redemption Race win on Sunday represents a solid return, Paffett admitted that it hadn’t been plain sailing, with the team quietly battling persistent mechanical issues during the event.
“We haven’t had the smoothest of weekends. We’ve had a lot of problems with the car, and we still haven’t got to the bottom of the problem that we have,” he said. “I still don’t think we were at peak performance there with the car, so there was a bit of work to do.”
On Saturday the team grabbed its first podium since last May’s Hydro X Prix in Scotland, thanks to a genius move by Ekstrom who entered the first corner on the opening lap several meters wide, only to use the subsequent momentum to power up the inside in the second phase of the turn. It was a move that Ekstrom had planned in advance, but one that the team didn’t expect to work as well as it did.
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“With Mattias you have someone that looks everywhere,” Paffett said of his former DTM rival. “He doesn’t just look from one waypoint to the next, drive there and look at the next one, he looks at the whole environment and where he can make a difference, where he can find a different line, especially in Turn 1 and things like this.
“I spoke to him after the course walk and it was already in his head; he already knew what he wanted to do. I think the first time he did it in Saturday’s final, it turned out better than he thought it would. We spoke about it and agreed it was worth a go and we were expecting one, maybe two places, and when he came out in the lead it was like, ‘That worked better than we thought.’
“So that’s what Mattias does — he’s creative and that’s going to be really important when you’re fighting against all these really top drivers.”
The team’s subsequent Redemption Race win on Sunday – which it got after missing out on a final berth thanks to a Traction Challenge time result tiebreaker – would have been a somewhat meaningless victory last season, but with it now awarding the same number of points as finishing last in the final, it carries more weight, offering real “redemption.”
“On Sunday we were struggling a lot with performance, so getting the result we did, the win in the Redemption Race, with that being worth extra points now, is key,” said Paffett. “In the final itself, we got the same amount of points as Rosberg, which is really key because they’re obviously going to be championship challengers, so I would say there’s a lot of positives, but I would also say there’s stuff we really need to get on top of if we want to be fighting for a championship. We showed, certainly from Saturday, that we can do that because we can fight with the best.
“It is [crucial] because, like today, we didn’t make the Redemption Race because we were equal on [qualifying] points with Veloce, so it wasn’t a points thing, it was a Traction Challenge pace thing which is sometimes difficult because the circuit changes depending on what heat you’re in, so it’s not always a nice way for it to be decided if you make a final or not. To be in a Redemption Race with a competitive car and to be able to win and get the same points as someone in the final is really important.”
It still seems odd, doesn’t it, McLaren in off-road racing? And yet this year will be the third that the famously squeaky-clean brand has gone and got its feet – or rather its tires – dirty. The last two years have been OK for the NEOM McLaren …
It still seems odd, doesn’t it, McLaren in off-road racing? And yet this year will be the third that the famously squeaky-clean brand has gone and got its feet — or rather its tires — dirty.
The last two years have been OK for the NEOM McLaren Extreme E team — steady progress, flashes of speed, and a couple of podiums — but now it wants to make that final step. Extreme E’s highest-profile under-achievers have glory on their minds. Of course they do — they are McLaren, after all.
“For sure McLaren did very well,” new signing Cristina Gutierrez tells RACER. “It’s not an easy championship, all the things change each year and it’s sometimes difficult to manage the rules, the car, all the things that can happen, and for sure they are trying everything to win this championship.”
Gutierrez and Ekstrom bring experience in a variety of realms to the McLaren Extreme E program.
Alongside the Season 2 champion will be Mattias Ekstrom, the double DTM and 2016 World Rallycross champion who almost added an Extreme E crown to that list last year.
“I think that all the teams in Extreme E have had, at times, the chance to win races,” he points out. “But the most difficult thing is to keep the car on-pace every single session with changing conditions — you have unlucky starting slots, and there’s always something or someone that will bring their A-game at time. I think with the experience I have and also what Cristina has, I think will be able to bring this.
“Sometimes, to win you need to be in the right flow. It’s easy to see the result afterwards, but on the trip to get to the result, you also have to be very humble and honest with yourself about why you’re winning and why you’re not.”
The drivers are just part of the equation, though, with the tight-knit group McLaren takes to the races just as vital — and Gutierrez is eager to get stuck in with them.
Race prep in Extreme E requires managing “all the details” in some of the most remote locations on Earth. Colin McMaster/Motorsport Images
“The professionalism that they have, all the little details that they manage — every single detail is important for them,” she says. “When you you walk through the door at McLaren you can see the professionalism, all the teamwork.
“When they started in Extreme E I was impressed by the team spirit, the family that they had in Extreme E and for sure when they called me I wanted to have this feeling, the family spirit. I can now say I am now [in] the family and I’m very happy.”
One member of that team is sporting director Gary Paffett. The former driver is very much a known quantity to Ekstrom, who spent years battling with him in DTM — the pair won two titles apiece between 2004 and 2018. But while they might have enjoyed an intense rivalry in the past, nowadays, Ekstrom says, “when it comes to the sporting side, I feel I can trust him 100 percent.”
“Gary was one of my fiercest competitors in DTM — when I saw him in the paddock, it was always like this love-hate relationship,” he says. “But as he wasn’t competing against me [in Extreme E], if you have to know why I’m here, it’s him. It’s exciting to be working with everybody here, but especially him.
“I shouldn’t say it, but he’s one of the few I could accept losing against in my entire career,” he reveals. “I never enjoyed losing against him, but I could accept it, and to have him as the boss during this project is very exciting. To have the chance to work closely with him is something I’m looking forward to.
“The bottom line is I know how much of a winner he is, and I can see that the entire team is doing things very professionally; but in the end you want a good result, so I will try to help them as much as I can.”
The conversation between the three of us so far has centered around the team’s expectations, but it’s only natural that when someone takes a new job, you question what the perks could be, too. Their predecessors Tanner Foust and Emma Gilmour got to sample some legendary McLaren machines like the MP4/2, MP4/6, MP4/14, F1 GTR, and M8D, so have Gutierrez and Ekstrom been putting together their wish lists?
Gutierrez laughs before I even can finish the question.
“Well, for sure it would be a highlight in my life,” she says. “If I can select one, I’d be happy to drive a Formula 1 car. I don’t care about the year — it’s one of the biggest moments in the career of any driver so I hope to have the chance to drive one of them. We will see.”
The prospect of getting a chance to play with the McLaren collection of vintage F1 cars is another side benefit of association with the team. Dominik Wilde photo
Ekstrom previously hasn’t been too fazed about the prospect of sampling a grand prix car, but now as an official McLaren driver, the lure seems to be proving too much to ignore. He, however, is more keen to spend time with fellow motorsport enthusiast — and new boss — Zak Brown.
“I wouldn’t say I’m one of them that wants to jump in the car and drive — I’m not a Formula 1 person, but I’m starting to realize at my age, at one point I want to drive a Formula 1 car, I must admit,” he says. “The only thing I haven’t driven on the planet is an F1 car. I still think there are some things in my life I should learn to explore and maybe that’s something I can ask Zak to put on my wish list for Christmas.
“He has quite a big passion for motorsport, but also rally cars or anything. He’s not a Formula 1 nerd; he’s more of a motorsport nerd. I’m looking forward to seeing his garage, to see his rally cars and just to have a chat with him to see what he thinks about life.”
The job at hand, however, remains the main focus. And it’s not lost on the team that it is racing in one of the most competitive series around.
“For sure we need to build the team and we need to be aligned from the beginning to try to win, because every single team can win in these races,” Gutierrez says. “We are a big team now, for sure, but the other teams are also going to be fast and competitive. In this championship every point is very important, so we should fight from the beginning for each single point.”
Gutierrez speaks from experience, having won the Extreme E title with Sebastien Loeb at Lewis Hamilton’s X44 team in 2022. Ekstrom knows what it takes, too, even if he came up short in the 2023 title fight after an incident for former teammate Laia Sanz on the last lap of the last race of the most recent campaign. The near-miss has only made him more hungry to succeed in his new surroundings.
“I think the day where I go racing and I don’t dream about winning, that’s when I won’t be on the entry list,” he says. “That’s not saying I have to win to be a happy man, because sometimes you can’t control the environment or something happens — or especially in this racing you can have accidents — but I definitely go into this season with the hopes of being competitive in every session, every weekend and will just try to avoid as many mistakes as possible, try to have as clean weekends as possible.
“I think last year, there was evidence that if you do your homework, if you keep pushing and you do all the right things, you will be one of the championship contenders,” he adds. “If we manage to keep the car clean, have no technical issues and we take care with our driving, I would really like to have a championship battle again this year. I also love and get addicted to those hard battles which, in the end, you want to win.
“Last year we had a super-hard battle but we lost and that sucks, but it’s like this. I haven’t won this championship, I still want to win it, and with Cristina I have somebody who has won it and I think she’s better than ever so I don’t see many excuses why we shouldn’t be able to fight for it.”
