After the legendary Quattro and the WRC in the ’80s, Audi might be at it again changing a form of rally racing with its innovation. Although it failed to claim victory in its first entry at the Dakar Rally, its rivals seem scared of the hybrid Audi RS Q e-tron.

Featuring an all-electric drivetrain with an internal combustion generator to get it through the longer, less civilized sections of the notoriously wild Dakar Rally, one of Audi’s competitors, Prodrive, called the racer “the fastest car by a long way” in an interview with Motorsport.

A crash and navigational issues early on in the 2022 Dakar Rally took all of the RS Q e-trons out of the running for the overall victory, but the vehicles proved their speed winning four of the race’s 12 stages.

Read Also: Audi’s 2022 Dakar Rally Contender Arrives At The Moroccan Desert For Testing

“I think between ourselves and Toyota, we can’t argue at all. It seems very fair,” said Prodrive chairman David Richards. “But clearly the performance of the Audi is at a different level. They are 200 kg overweight and they are still a lot faster than our car. So if they had been reliable they would have won by an hour, easily.”

Even though his team ended up winning the rally this year, Toyota’s Dakar team manager, Glyn Hall, agreed with Richards, saying that was clearly the quickest car in terms of raw pace.

“Well, the problem we’ve got is the Audis did a fantastic job showing how fast they were,” Hall told Motorsport. “We have to look at that in detail because we know they are 200 kg overweight and they are still winning lots of stages.”

Both are calling for regulations to even the competition and slow the Audi down lest it becomes a one-horse race.

“We have to find a balance so everyone has an equal competition. And that’s the job for the FIA to achieve that. Otherwise, Audi would come and kill the sport,” said Richards, who allowed that regulating new technologies is very hard and takes time: “The FIA will have to address that problem because the FIA committed to making everything level, so I trust in them for that.”