Álex Llibre would have been proud of what his twin brother Carlos has achieved. Six years since Álex’s passing, Carlos is set to tick off one of the biggest items on his brother’s bucket list: competing in the Dakar Rally.
Carlos and his friends Javier “Javi” Amat de Caralt, Fernando “Fer” Conde Targa, Josep “Pepe” Martí Suñer, Josep Pedró Subirats, and Xavier “Xavi” Pes Bosck will run the 2024 Dakar Rally in the Rally2 class, competing under the ALL1 Dakar Team banner. Álvaro Andreu, the seventh member of the gang, hurt his back while riding with Pes in the dunes and was unable to enter any races to qualify for Dakar; ddespite his absence, the team plans to bring Andreu out to Saudi Arabia anyway to cheer them on.
The programme was formed shortly after Álex died in a motorcycle accident in 2017. He left behind a bucket list of 101 articles that included entering marathons and triathlons, while the fifth item was to run the Dakar on a bike. “ALL1” is shorthand for the slogan “All as One”.
The group entered various cross-country rallies together starting with the 2022 Rallye du Maroc, which is part of the World Rally-Raid Championship like the Dakar Rally and where winners of the Road to Dakar challenge can earn free registration. Llibre retired after crashing and breaking his collarbone while the others reached the finish with Pedró leading them in the Rally2 class with a twentieth ahead of Amat (fortieth), Pes (forty-ninth), Marti (fifty-first), Andreu (fifty-seventh), and Conde (fifty-eighth).
ALL1’s first race of 2023 was the Baja TT Dehesa Extremadura in April, part of the FIM Bajas World Cup, where Pedró finished fourth overall with Llibre in eighteenth. Pedró continued to impress at the Baja Aragón three months later, placing third among Open 450cc riders. In August, Llibre scored a top ten in the Rally2 and fifth in the Road to Dakar at the W2RC’s Desafío Ruta 40 to clinch his Dakar ticket. Pedró followed suit at last month’s W2RC season-ending Rallye du Maroc where he was fourteenth in Rally2 and fifth among Road to Dakar entrants.
A documentary following their efforts, titled El Efecto ALL1 (The Effect of ALL1), premiered in January.
For Dakar, each of the sextet were assigned the same number grouping, with Llibre having #114 and Pedró getting #115, followed by Pes (#116), Martí (#117), Conde (#118), and Amat (#119).
The 2024 Dakar Rally begins on 5 January.
