Cristina Gutierrez Herrero

 

Cristina Gutiérrez Herrero is a Spanish off-road specialist who has won stage rallies and recorded stage wins on the Dakar. 

She mostly competes in rally raids, but has proved competitive in rallysprints, driving 4WD vehicles. She won one such event, the Tierra Alfoz de Quintanadueñas Rallysprint in 2012, driving a Toyota Landcruiser against both off-road and stage rally cars. 

She has been rallying since 2010 and previously competed in karting and motocross. Her first off-road rally was the 2010 Historicos Baja Tierras del Cid, with her brother as her co-driver. She was fourth, driving a Toyota Landcruiser. Her first major event was the 2011 Baja Espana, the first of eighth consecutive entries.

At the end of 2016, she embarked on her first Dakar Rally. She finished the event in 44th place and became the first Spanish woman to make it to the end. Her car was a Mitsubishi Montero.

Her second Dakar was a particularly tough one, as her production Mitsubishi was not quite as competitive as she wanted and she got very little sleep. Still, she improved on her finishing position from 2017 with a 38th place. This was in spite of a multiple roll down a sand dune on the opening stage.

She upgraded to a faster Mitsubishi prototype, an Eclipse Cross, in 2019. This proved a sensible move and she recorded her third consecutive finish, in 26th place. She was the first Spanish driver and the first Mitsubishi crew to finish.

Driving a new car for the Red Bull Junior team, she competed in the 2021 Dakar with navigator Francois Cazalet and became the first female driver to win a stage since Jutta Kleinschmidt in 2005. She won three stages overall, driving a Red Bull-sponsored Light Prototype vehicle. Sadly, the car’s gearbox gave up after the seventh stage. 

She has won the Spanish All-Terrain Rally championship: she was T1 champion and overall runner-up in 2015 after a series of second places in Spanish raids, including the Baja Aragon, which is part of the FIA Cross-Country Cup. Previously in 2014, she was seventh in the championship, and fourth in class. She was driving a Mitsubishi. To match her six Dakar outings, she has earned six Spanish women’s off-road titles.

In 2015, she was third in the FIA Women’s Cross Country Selection event in Qatar and won a funded drive in the 2016 Sealine CrossCountry Rally. She was the first female driver home.

She still occasionally competed in stage rallying during this time. In 2017, she drove a different Mitsubishi, a Lancer Evo VIII, in the Isla de los Volcanes Rally. She did not finish. Her only gravel outing in 2018, the Terra de Auga Rally, gave her a thirteenth place in an Evo X. 

After a break, she drove a Ford Fiesta in the 2020 Terra da Auga Rally and finished 18th overall, from 56 finishers. 

At the end of 2020, she was announced as a driver for the X44 Extreme E team, led by Lewis Hamilton. Her team-mate was Sebastien Loeb. They won the final round of the championship, held in Dorset, UK, having consistently qualified well but had problems in finals. Their final position was second.

This was doubly remarkable considering that Cristina suffered two broken vertebrae during the Kazakhstan Rally and had to take two months' rest. It was triply remarkable in that she had just won the Kazakhstan event for the Red Bull Off-Road Junior team, in severe pain after crashing on the final leg.

She was on form for the 2022 Dakar, driving a T3 Lightweight prototype for the Red Bull Junior team. A potential disqualification due to the team using a banned Bluetooth intercom was suspended, meaning she and Francois Cazalet kept their third place in class.

Another Extreme E season with Sebastien Loeb ended in a championship victory. They only won one event outright in Chile, but three further podiums kept them ahead.

She paired up with Jamaican Fraser McConnell for X44 in the 2023 Extreme E championship. They won races in Scotland and Sardinia and were fourth overall in the championship, often performing well in heats. In preparation for another Dakar in January 2024, she entered several cross-country events, finishing fourth in class in the Sonora Rally, third in Morocco and second in the Desafio Ruta 40. Her car is a T3 Taurus light prototype.

She also signed for the Dacia team but only did preparation and development for them, in readiness for the 2025 Dakar. Her team-mate will be Sebastien Loeb once more.

Away from rallying, Cristina is a dentist.

(Image copyright Red Bull)