Mitchel van den Brink will drive the 2027 Dakar Rally as Team De Rooy’s lead driver. The 24-year-old from Harskamp will have a newly developed Iveco rally truck at his disposal. The plans were announced during the Eurol Rally Sport sponsor day on the Oude Essenerweg in Kootwijkerbroek.
His father Martin van den Brink (56) remains active under the Eurol Rally Sport banner and will start in a modernised Iveco from MM Technology. Both trucks will continue to run in the familiar Eurol Rally Sport colours. Mitchel once again forms a crew with navigator Bart van Heun and mechanic Jarno van de Pol.
An opportunity that came their way
According to Mitchel, Eurol Rally Sport is directly involved in the development of the new truck. He called the collaboration an opportunity the team did not want to let pass, and stressed that team owner Gerard de Rooy is willing to invest in the technology of the new Iveco. He summed up the goal for 2027 briefly: to perform to the maximum and fight for the highest achievable result.
Gerard de Rooy expressed satisfaction with the arrangement. According to him, the collaboration also gives his team access to Eurol’s technical knowledge and products, something he says it has already had positive experiences with in earlier years. Alongside Mitchel’s crew, Team De Rooy will bring two other formations to the start in Saudi Arabia.
The first competitive kilometres with the new truck will come in the Rally du Maroc, which runs from 28 September to 3 October. Ahead of that rally, several test days are planned in Morocco, with which the team wants to fine-tune the final details in the run-up to the Dakar.
From navigator to driver
Mitchel van den Brink’s career is closely intertwined with that of his father. At a young age he raced quads and motocross, after which he made his first metres in a Dakar rally truck in the Czech Republic at the age of twelve. Later he added experience in a buggy, including in the Sahara.
At sixteen he joined Mammoet Rallysport as navigator and mechanic, becoming the youngest participant ever in the Dakar Rally. After seven rallies in that role, it was decided that he had gained enough experience to start independently as a driver. He made his debut as a truck driver in 2021, again as the youngest driver ever in the truck category.
Rise through the truck class
After the 2021 Dakar, Van den Brink drove the Silk Way Rally, where Gerard de Rooy noticed him and invited him to run as assistance for his team. In the 2022 Dakar Rally that yielded a tenth place in an assistance truck. In April of that year he moved up to TeamNL within the KNAF.
From there it went uphill. A nineteenth place on his debut in 2021 was followed by a tenth (2022) and a fourth place (2023). In 2024 he stood on the podium for the first time with a third place, in 2025 he finished second behind Martin Macík, and in 2026 he completed a run of three consecutive podium finishes with another third place. That edition was won by Vaidotas Zala, who together with Aleš Loprais delivered a De Rooy one-two.
Changing trucks
Where Van den Brink drove his first years with an Iveco from Team De Rooy, from 2025 he opted for an Iveco Powerstar from MM Technology, Macík’s brand. The reason was pragmatic: in the Empty Quarter he had seen how his rival got up the dunes more easily with a considerably lighter truck. For 2027 he now returns to De Rooy, once again behind the wheel of an Iveco.
Besides the trucks, Van den Brink is also active in lighter machinery. In the 2025 Morocco Desert Challenge he drove alongside Bart van Heun in a South Racing Can-Am to second place in the overall standings, taking the stage win in the closing leg.
The title is still missing
Despite three podium finishes in a row, the outright Dakar victory is still missing from his record. In 2025 he opened strongly with wins in the prologue and the first stage, but Macík gradually built a lead of more than two hours. In 2026 Van den Brink led for a long time, until a broken driveshaft in the tenth stage cost him well over an hour and dropped him back to third. He kept a level head about it afterwards: there were lessons to learn and a chance to come back stronger.
That is precisely the point the move to De Rooy seems aimed at. In 2026 the team fielded the fastest trucks with Zala and Loprais, and with a newly developed Iveco and the role of lead driver, Van den Brink gains the equipment and the position that have so far been just missing. Whether that will be enough for the victory he has been chasing for several years now remains for the 2027 edition to show.
