Porsche 911 Dakar Makes History at Rally dos Sertões

Porsche 911 Dakar became the first of its kind to enter Rally dos Sertões, covering 7,440 km across Brazil. Discover key details of this milestone.

The Porsche 911 Dakar has made its first-ever appearance at Rally dos Sertões, one of South America’s most demanding off-road endurance events. For a car so deeply associated with asphalt and racetracks, the setting could hardly be more extreme: a Brazilian rally raid, launched in 1993, traditionally dominated by motorcycles, buggies, quads and UTVs.

Yet that contrast is exactly what turned this story into something remarkable. Brazilian enthusiasts Susele and Fredy Piotto Vogt entered the rally with a 911 Dakar, becoming the first team to bring a Porsche into the Sertões. They competed in the Expedition category, a parallel format that runs alongside the official race but is not part of the main classification.

For the Piotto Vogt family, it was not simply about joining an event, but about turning it into a true cross-country adventure. They left their hometown of Campo Largo, drove nearly 1,200 kilometres to reach the start in Goiânia, completed the rally route, and then drove the same cars back home once the finish line was crossed.

In total, the journey stretched to 7,440 kilometres over the course of two weeks. The rally itself covered 3,482 kilometres, including 2,215 kilometres of special stages. The 2025 edition took competitors across five Brazilian states, finishing in the Marechal Deodoro area on the Alagoas coast.

Choosing the 911 Dakar proved to be more than a bold statement. Porsche developed the model as a limited off-road-focused version of its iconic sports car, featuring a 161 mm ride height and an integrated lift system that can raise the car by an additional 30 mm, reaching up to 191 mm of ground clearance. Dedicated driving modes were designed specifically for loose gravel and sand, while top speed is capped at 240 km/h due to the all-terrain tyres.

In that context, the Sertões challenge feels like a natural stage for the car’s purpose: the 911 Dakar was built to blur the line between high-performance road driving and serious off-road capability, and Brazil offered a rare chance to prove that concept in real-world conditions.

For Porsche, this appearance is more than an eye-catching adventure story. It underlines that off-road-oriented sports cars can deliver genuine capability beyond their image. If similar projects follow, interest in this kind of niche performance model could grow further, especially in markets where terrain and climate demand more than traditional road-focused engineering.