Seth
Quintero
United States
·
Rally Raid
Date of birth | September 12, 2002 |
|---|---|
Birthplace | San Marcos, CA |
Age | 23 |
Nationality | United States |
Career start | 2018 |
Disciplines | Motorsports Various |
Born in 2002, Seth Quintero grew up in San Marcos, California, where his family spent their recreational time off-roading in the desert. He first rode a quad bike at the age of just four yers old.
Quintero, with his family as his team, started racing UTVs at the age of 10 in 2012, with the plan being to take things slowly, but, as he admits: “We’re super-competitive, and I wanted to do more and more. Things escalated pretty quickly.”
In 2014, Quintero emerged to clinch the youth class of the UTV World Championship. “All of a sudden here’s this 11-year-old who won the biggest race of the year,” he recalls. “That’s when Red Bull noticed me.”
A year later in 2015 Quintero was the UTV World Champion and the WORCS champion in the 170 (youth) class before moving up to the Production level. By 2018, he was racing in the Best in the Desert series. Quintero’s first race was the MINT 400 and the 15-year-old powered through the 400 miles [640km], finishing second. He also was the runner-up at the Pro UTV level at Vegas-to-Reno.
In 2019, as a 16-year-old, Quintero produced a near-perfect campaign, winning the Best in the Desert series championship for the Pro class by winning five of six events. And in so doing, he rewrote the record books, by becoming the youngest ever driver to win the MINT 400, Vegas-to-Reno, UTV World Championship, the Parker 250 and the Silver State 300 in the UTV Pro NA class.
In 2020, at the age of just 17, Quintero went to the Dakar for the first time but he was denied the chance to race when rally organisers deemed him to be too young.
The following year he did make his Dakar debut and became the rally's youngest ever stage winner. “We came out swinging and we proved our point that we’re here to stay,” Quintero said after his historic stage win. “The Red Bull Off-Road Junior Team is not a team to be messed with. We’ll be back next year and we’ll be back better.”
In 2022, Quintero returned to the Dakar Rally alongside co-driver Dennis Zenz and proceeded to write his name into the record books again. The American ultimately missed out on a podium place in the T3 category, but achieved the highest number of stage wins in a single rally, securing 12 stage victories in Saudi Arabia.
Quintero and Zenz then parked on the podium at the 2023 Dakar, scoring second place overall in a Can-Am Maverick T3 as part of the Red Bull Off-Road Junior Team USA presented by BFGoodrich.
Quintero joined TOYOTA GAZOO Racing to tackle the 2024 Dakar Rally in the elite T1+ car class. He drove a Toyota GR DKR Hilux T1+ to victory in the Prologue stage alongside Zenz before some mechanical problems during Stage 4 resulted in the duo falling down the pecking order. Alongside his co-driver Zenz, Quintero earned third place finish overall at the 2024 Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge.
Despite not being in contention for the overall win in Dakar Rally 2025, he focused on collecting stage points – a smart strategy to build his W2RC standing.