Cristina Gutiérrez
Experienced Spanish off-road racing driver Cristina Gutiérrez joined the NEOM McLaren Extreme E Team for the 2024 season of the Extreme E Championship.
Passionate about motorsport from a young age, Cristina made her racing debut in Rally Raid in 2010 at just 18 years old. Her first high-profile race was in the All-Terrain Spanish Rally Championships in 2011, when she topped the female category on her debut, before finishing as overall vice-champion in 2015 after several successful seasons.
Her international rallying debut came in 2017 on the back of winning the Sealine Cross-Country Rally women’s category in Qatar. On her Dakar Rally debut, she became the first woman from Spain to finish the off-road classic in a car. She continued to break records and in 2019, achieved her best result in the series, securing 26th place overall before becoming the second woman to achieve a stage victory in Dakar Rally in 2021.
2021 was a busy year for Cristina as she chose to embark on a new adventure and joined Extreme E for its first season, signing with Lewis Hamilton’s Team X44. She earned the team a podium on their debut with third in the 2021 Desert X-Prix and a first win in the season finale, finishing second overall. That same year, Cristina claimed the Red Bull Off-Road Junior Team their first-ever rally win with overall victory in the T3 class at Rally Andalucia. She also made yet more history as the first female driver to win the FIA World Cup for Cross-Country Rallies.
Cristina picked up where she left off in 2022, giving the Red Bull Off-Road Junior Team their first top-three result in Dakar Rally, becoming the first Spanish woman to step onto the final podium of the rally. She continued with X44 for Season 2 of Extreme E as the team were crowned champions.
Cristina completed her seventh Dakar with a stage victory in 2023, finishing fourth in T3 and occupying the 31st position in the car category. In Extreme E, she picked up two more wins and two more podiums with X44 as the team finished fourth overall.
It took Cristina less than a month in 2024 to make history as she was crowned the overall champion of the Dakar Rally in the challenger category in January, alongside her co-driver Pablo Moreno Huete.