Rebecca Busi – The Story So Far

Guest blog by Thiemo Albers-Daly

From the beginning, it was all only ever about the Dakar for Rebecca Busi. When we first crossed paths back in November of 2021, that was the one thing that she wanted to talk about the most and ever since then, it has been the through line and the backbone for her and everything that she does. It’s her north star.

I agreed to have her on as a guest for my motorsport podcast, On the Kerbs, because, first and foremost, I wanted to learn more about the Dakar. The second reason was one that very few people would blame me for – Rebecca had told me that despite having trained for off road racing, she’d never actually competed in a race before. She wanted the Dakar to be her first. The third and final reason I agreed to interview her was because there was no way that I could resist talking to and finding out more about someone who was insanely bold and ambitious enough to make the Dakar their first ever competitive race and why Rebecca’s passion for it was so intoxicating. It sounded like something you’d see on an episode of old Top Gear. I loved it.

For anyone who doesn’t know or needs reminding, the Dakar Rally is the biggest rally raid in the world. It is held annually and is designed to test all that compete in it to the extreme…and beyond. In 2025, it will last for fourteen days and consist of twelve arduous stages across all kinds of challenging terrains. It’s not simply a race against your competitors, it’s a battle against the landscape and conditions themselves as well as an endurance fight and competition with the toughest opponent there is – yourself.

“A challenge for those who go. A dream for those who stay behind.” – Thierry Sabine

This is what Rebecca Busi wanted to do to kick off her motorsport career. If you didn’t before, I’m sure you can now understand why I simply had to talk to her. During our first interview, I could tell that she wasn’t someone who was underestimating the challenge that lay ahead of her and that she knew she wouldn’t be fully aware of the true scale of the task at hand until she was in the thick of it. Rebecca knew that this was going to be one of the most difficult things she would ever have to do and that it might end her motorsport career before it even began – and she did it anyway.

It was clearly an ambitious move to make and while I loved this all or nothing approach, I had to know why she thought that this was the way to go for her. Why not, for example, take part in some other races first and build up to the Dakar, like so many do? Quite simply, Rebecca didn’t see why she should have to do this. The Dakar was her goal and if her ambitions of making it in motorsport were not to come true, then at least she would have competed in the one race that she’d always been obsessed with (a race that some drivers only ever dream of and never actually make it to) and that she would have done it her way. Rebecca wanted to jump headfirst into the deep end instead, announce herself to the world and go after her dreams.

Naturally, when the Dakar came around at the start of 2022, I paid more attention to it than I had ever done before. I wanted to see if Rebecca could make it. While her ultimate aim was to get onto the podium and win the Dakar, we both knew that that was unlikely to happen the first time around – although I’m confident that neither one of us would have complained had that actually happened. Each day of the Dakar was long and exhausting. Think of some of the longest days of your life and then put them all together in one seemingly never-ending chain with little to no respite between each one. That’s a taste of what the Dakar can feel like.

A seemingly endless amount of miles, stages, sand, rocks, obstacles and days later however, and she’d done it.

When Rebecca Busi finished the Dakar – her first ever race – on her initial attempt, I knew that there was something special here. While finishing a race may not seem like much to some people, finishing a test of endurance like this or the 24 Hours of Le Mans for example is said to be an extremely rewarding feeling and accomplishment in and of itself. So many don’t make it that far so to finish can feel like a victory in itself and for Rebecca, it was just that. She’d taken on one of the most difficult races in the world and gone the distance with it – Rocky Balboa style. Now the world of Rally Raid has its very own Italian Stallion.

Regardless of whatever else she would go on to achieve in her career, this already made for one heck of a story. It’s the kind of narrative that we love in motorsport. It’s Brawn GP clinching both titles for the Formula 1 2009 Season after being acquired for £1 less than a year before. It’s the underdog story.

In the time since then, Rebecca trained harder and fought tooth and nail to create new opportunities for herself so that she could continue to go racing, not just at the Dakar but in other rallies too that have since taken her all over the world and built up her levels of experience, as well as making her a more and more familiar face in the world of motorsport, building up a loyal fanbase along the way.

“When you are at the beginning of your career and you still don’t know if you will make it or even if you do, if you’ll make a difference, to get your first sponsor to say yes to you is a dream come true.” – Rebecca Busi

2023 saw Busi team up with Sebastien Delauney over the course of the season as she competed in the World Rally Raid Championship where her results included an exceptional P2 finish at the Sonora Rally in Mexico in the T4 category.

“Eat pasta, drive faster.” – Rebecca Busi

In 2024, Busi competed once more in the World Rally Raid Championship in the SSV category, kicking off once again with the beast that is the Dakar Rally. It was a rough and brutal start to the year in many ways as Rebecca had to throw everything she had, including the kitchen sink, at the event in order to make it to end of this particular race. But as she did in 2022, she managed it and overcame everything that came her way.

Things moved into an upward trend that would remain present for the rest of 2024 at the second round of the season in Abu Dhabi where she bounced back in glorious style to claim P3. She and the team then went one better in Portugal for the third round as she took second place. Rebecca concluded the year with a further two back-to-back podiums as she finished in third place in both Argentina and Morocco respectively. When all the points were added up, Rebecca had managed to climb all the way up to P3 in the Championship – something that might have seemed insurmountable back at the start of the season at the Dakar in Saudi Arabia. Such a turn around and such consistency since then perfectly demonstrated why it’s never over until it’s over in motorsport and that giving up is never an option.

“What do you like to do for fun away from racing?”

“Racing.”

Rebecca’s meteoric rise has been thrilling to watch over the last few years. She used to dream about and be inspired by her racing heroes of Nasser Al Attiyah and Cristina Gutierrez. Now, she’s competing alongside and against them. While her plans for 2025 have not yet been revealed, you’d be unwise to bet against her in whatever she puts her mind to.

Almost three years after Rebecca Busi made her entrance into the world of motorsport and onto my radar, she not only announced herself when she turned up at the Dakar a couple of months later in 2022, she also landed right into the world where she belongs, hit the ground running and hasn’t stopped since then, both in terms of racing and in terms of believing that she has got what it takes to not only be there, but to thrive and one day, win the Dakar. If this is what Rebecca is capable of doing in such a short amount of time, I cannot wait to see what she does next.