The Rallye du Maroc, after some scheduling adjustments, is the next race on the World Rally-Raid Championship calendar on 1–6 October. With over three months before the grid descends upon Morocco, organisers revealed the route for the event, which will be a loop 2,300 kilometres in length and broken up into five stages. The new layout was revealed Tuesday.
Due to COVID-19, the rally in recent years consisted of five loops that started and ended at the bivouac in M’Hamid. As restrictions loosen up, racers are granted a greater travel distance with different destinations at each stage, though they will still spend four nights in the bivuoac.
Said bivouac is to be situated at the Grand Stade Adrar Agadir, a football stadium that has been a perennial venue for the FIFA World Cup whenever Morocco bids for host rights.
The qualifying stage—dubbed Stage #1A—is a 58-km loop around Agadir in southwestern Morocco along the Atlantic Ocean. Stage #1B will take competitors out of the area on the race’s longest stretch: a 562-km excursion to Tan-Tan, which previously served as a stop for the Dakar Rally during its stint as a Europe-to-Africa race. From Tan-Tan, the rally heads to Laâyoune 562 kilometres away for Stage #2, where a 342-km loop of the city makes up Stage #3. Racers then head back to Tan-Tan on a 559-km run before closing the rally by returning home to Agadir via 374-km trip.
“I wanted to take the competitors elsewhere, on new tracks,” said rally operator David Castera. “From a sporting point of view, it will be more interesting because the regulars won’t have more reference points than the competitors who are less initiated in Morocco. When I design a new edition, with my teams, the priority is the course.”
Organised since 2000, the Rallye du Maroc was originally the final race of the inaugural World Rally-Raid Championship on 6–12 October before being pushed forward by five days to accommodate the rescheduled Andalucía Rally.
