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. He crashed during Stage #2 and partially lost vision in one eye as the impact hit his head, but he completed the leg and was able to see again normally by the next day. 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 | Rider | 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 |
Quad stage winners
| Stage | Number | Rider | Team | Time |
| Prologue | 151 | Alexandre Giroud* | Drag’on Rally Team | 44:10 |
| Stage #1 | 151 | Alexandre Giroud* | Drag’on Rally Team | 4:55:28 |
| Stage #2 | 151 | Alexandre Giroud* | Drag’on Rally Team | 6:21:06 |
| Stage #3 | 151 | Alexandre Giroud* | Drag’on Rally Team | 5:40:44 |
| Stage #4 | 151 | Alexandre Giroud* | Drag’on Rally Team | 5:52:17 |
| Stage #5 | 154 | Francisco Moreno Flores* | Drag’on Rally Team | 5:49:21 |
| Stage #6 | 152 | Manuel Andújar | 7240 Team | 4:08:25 |
| Stage #7 | N/A | Cancelled due to rain | N/A | N/A |
| Stage #8 | 152 | Manuel Andújar | 7240 Team | 4:56:05 |
| Stage #9 | 162 | Laisvydas Kancius | Story Racing SRO | 4:20:14 |
| Stage #10 | 159 | Marcelo Medeiros* | Taguatur Racing Team | 2:04:28 |
| Stage #11 | 159 | Marcelo Medeiros* | Taguatur Racing Team | 3:50:47 |
| Stage #12 | 159 | Marcelo Medeiros* | Taguatur Racing Team | 2:37:04 |
| Stage #13 | 159 | Marcelo Medeiros* | Taguatur Racing Team | 2:55:48 |
| Stage #14 | 162 | Laisvydas Kancius | Story Racing SRO | 1:36:16 |
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 |
