Esteemed motorsport engineer Christian Loriaux has joined Overdrive Racing as Head of Development with immediate effect.
The 58-year-old Belgian has joined the world of cross-country rallying for the first time after an illustrious career working with top-level teams in the FIA World Rally Championship and endurance racing.
Cross-country rallying will be a totally new challenge for the Belgian as he oversees the ongoing development and the progression of the Toyota Hilux for the official TOYOTA GAZOO Racing team. The emphasis will be on future long-term technology and maintaining Toyota’s success in the FIA World Rally-Raid Championship (W2RC) and the Manufacturers’ Championship.
Jean-Marc Fortin, Managing Director of Overdrive Racing, said:
“We are very pleased to welcome Christian Loriaux to the team. He is such a famous engineer with an impressive history with Subaru, Ford, Bentley and Hyundai. Honestly, this is an honour and a new motivation for us to build an even stronger R&D department. He will be heading this department, to fight with all the other teams and to develop new technology with TOYOTA GAZOO Racing and to look what we can achieve together in cross-country racing.”
Andrea Carlucci, TOYOTA GAZOO W2RC Team Principal:
‘We are delighted that Christian joins the Overdrive family. There is no doubt that both the official TOYOTA GAZOO Racing Team and the many privateers that are part of the Toyota W2RC community will benefit from his knowledge and commitment.”
Loriaux worked as an engineer for the Prodrive team during the Subaru Impreza era between 1991 and 2002, He then became the Chief Engineer and Technical Director at M-Sport to handle their Ford World Rally Team campaign from 2002 until his switch to Bentley and then the Hyundai World Rally Team under Andrea Adamo in 2021.
In his early career, Loriaux worked for the Belgian RAS Sport team without pay while studying at university in Belgium. After his ground-breaking work with the likes of Colin McRae and Petter Solberg and the Subaru World Rally Team, he followed up with further successes with versions of the Ford Focus RS WRC and then the Bentley Continental GT and GT3 for endurance racing.
Overdrive Racing will field nine cars at this month’s Dakar Rally for Yazeed Al-Rajhi, Rokas Baciuška, Juan Cruz Yacopini, Toby Price, Urvo Männama, Marcos Moraes and Isidre Esteve Pujol, in addition to offering full-service support to TOYOTA GAZOO Racing’s Seth Quintero and Lucas Moraes.
The team will also provide support to the two Chinese Mintimes Yunxiang Rally Team drivers Guoyu Zhang and Rong Zi.
