Why Alonso must heed Loeb's Dakar failures

For all of motorsport's ever-increased driver specialisation, it feels intrinsically right that a truly great talent should still be able to perform in whatever car they drive and whatever event they contest.

It caused no particular shock to see Hyundai World Rally Championship ace Thierry Neuville rock up to TCR Germany last weekend and dominate his debut circuit race. Just as it was no big surprise when Sebastien Loeb took his wins in GT racing, the World Touring Car Championship, or World Rallycross, or when Sebastien Ogier and Andrea Dovizioso proved instantly competitive in DTM.

And then there's Fernando Alonso, of course, who has made it his mission to showcase his versatility as a motorsport competitor and has been almost universally successful at it so far, the 2019 Indianapolis 500 misstep notwithstanding.

Still, even for Alonso, a Dakar Rally outing would be something extraordinary, several steps removed from any other discipline he's tried. And yet on Tuesday, the two-time Formula 1 champion confirmed that he would seriously look into making his debut in the marathon event as early as next January.

If he does follow through with it, chances are good he will be just fine as a Dakar competitor. But Alonso doesn't do things to be 'just fine', and if he's intent on truly making his mark on the marathon sooner or later, the example of its previous main star attraction should be a warning against taking anything for granted.

Regarded by many as the greatest rally driver ever, nine-time WRC champion Loeb has contested four Dakars since his debut in 2016. He entered the event with the might of Peugeot's factory programme and its already-developed cross-country challenger, and was, unsurprisingly, quick right away, racking up numerous stage wins over the next few outings.

But, despite running top-tier machinery in all four events, Loeb remains winless at the Dakar, repeatedly pipped to the honour by names from its gallery of veterans. On his debut, Loeb rolled his Peugeot on the dunes. In 2018, the final year of Peugeot's works programme, his car dropped into a crevice and he was forced to drop out due to injuries sustained by co-driver Daniel Elena.

Between those two, in the 2017 edition, he pushed Stephane Peterhansel all the way but was left to rue a costly power issue early in the event, as well as a late puncture that put an end to his chances of a fightback.

And last year, now a privateer but with equipment that still had the capacity - at least in terms of pace - to get him to the top step of the podium, Loeb was thwarted by a combination of roadbook grievances and mechanical problems.

None of this is to in any way denigrate Loeb's Dakar efforts. Loeb has been relentlessly impressive, with Peterhansel - Dakar's most successful competitor - admitting as early as Loeb's second go at the marathon that the nine-time WRC champion already had him beaten in terms of pure pace.

'Two-time F1 champion, two-time Le Mans 24 Hours winner, Daytona 24 Hours winner and WEC champion' is an incredible CV, but all of that plus 'Dakar Rally winner' would be the stuff of legend

Yet three years on, Loeb still hasn't won it, losing more time than the old guard one way or another on each occasion.

Some of that will have been misfortune - Loeb certainly drove well enough to win in 2019.

But it is surely no coincidence that of Peugeot's all-star cross-country line-up from 2016-18 he alone went winless in rally-raids, as Peterhansel and Carlos Sainz Sr combined for the French firm's three Dakar wins, while Cyril Despres - despite seemingly lacking the out-and-out pace of his team-mates - brought home the two Silk Way Rally wins.

In several ways, Loeb will have been better set up for his Dakar debut than Alonso, should Alonso decide to jump in for 2020. For starters, there is, of course, the matter of background - Dakar presents a much more conventional challenge for a rally driver who has been listening to pacenotes his entire adult life compared to a circuit racer.

Sure, Dakar does count Jacky Ickx among its past winners, but these days such crossovers are very rare, with only the versatile Robby Gordon and the aforementioned Loeb coming to mind as recent examples of drivers who have been successful in both the marathon's top class and have a serious circuit racing CV.

Loeb also enjoyed a fairly welcoming route for his first Dakar, picking up several stage wins in 2016 during a first week that many of the rally's regulars lamented featured too many 'WRC-style' sections, rather than the dunes and other types of unfriendly terrain that make the event famous.

Admittedly, when those came about in week two, Loeb's victory challenge fell apart - but while the 2020 event in Saudi Arabia is also expected to have some initial road bits, the very nature of the Rub' al Khali desert suggests it will get to the really difficult terrain a lot sooner.

Then there's the matter of machinery. In Loeb's three years as part of Peugeot's factory Dakar assault, the manufacturer's buggies picked up 25 of the 36 stage wins on offer, winning each event and locking out the podium in 2017.

Sure, Alonso would drive the reigning rally winner - the Toyota Hilux - in 2020, but chances are it will not be a dominant package as Peugeot's was, given the strides X-raid's relatively new Mini Buggy rival had already made in time for the last edition.

Admittedly, there is one aspect in which Alonso should have the edge. Loeb brought his WRC co-driver Elena along for the rally-raid programme and, while Elena soon got the hang of the job, it did mean both crew members had to learn on the fly when it came to marathons.

If a Dakar win is indeed the ultimate aim then Alonso must remember it is a capricious, occasionally cruel race

Alonso will almost certainly be spared this particular challenge, as Toyota Gazoo is likely to draft in someone with prior Dakar experience.

The name bandied about right now is Marc Coma, who isn't necessarily a co-driver, but did win the Dakar six times on a KTM motorcycle and was the marathon's race director between 2015 and '19, which means he is very unlikely to be caught out by the roadbook.

In the end, Alonso probably isn't expecting to gun for top honours from the get-go. The 2009 Dakar champion and fellow Toyota driver Giniel de Villiers, who accompanied the F1 star during his initial test earlier this year as well as for his current four-day programme in Namibia, estimated that Alonso can target an initial top-10 finish, which is probably fair enough.

But it's hard to believe that Alonso will be content to just make up the numbers in a Dakar one-off and that he doesn't have a dream - a longer-term one, perhaps - of conquering the marathon.

If that's truly how it is, and he's just there to have fun, he's earned that right, but if a Dakar win is indeed the ultimate aim then Alonso must remember it is a capricious, occasionally cruel race.

For this writer, the memory still prevails of Loeb's WRC rival Mikko Hirvonen, one year on from his own quite impressive Dakar debut, arriving at the San Juan bivouac in 2017 virtually at night in a very battered Mini - having become lost twice, suffered two punctures and a gearbox failure, and damaged his car's radiator in a collision with a truck in the preceding stage.

And as far as worst-case scenarios go, Alonso may want to take a look at off-road champion Bryce Menzies' first foray into the Dakar with the very same X-raid team the year after, which ended when he demolished his Mini in a rollover 1.2-miles into the second stage.

But those kinds of calamities are clearly part of the allure and make the ultimate success all the sweeter - which is why, for all the warnings, Alonso absolutely should give it a go, beginning from 2020.

After all, "two-time F1 champion, two-time Le Mans winner, Daytona 24 Hours winner and WEC champion" is an incredible CV, but all of that plus "Dakar Rally winner" is the stuff of legend, and is well worth making a long-term plan around.

Whether the Dakar would allow that plan to become reality, or derail it with its unique set of challenges and curveballs, is a different question entirely.