Toby Price started stage rallying for the first time in 2025 - and immediately caught the bug
Photography by Red Bull & Australian Rally Championship
Words by Luke Barry
We may be connected by a shared passion for motorsport, but that’s where the comparisons end.
Where I see risk, he sees opportunity. Where I see danger, he sees a thrill. We can’t really relate to each other or trade experiences, yet there’s a purity in the way he speaks that I find instantly infectious.
“I need to get the adrenaline pumping through the system, and that’s my happy place,” he says. “Going flat out is where I feel at home.”
It’s a gorgeous line, and I could listen for hours. Only the signal disconnecting the UK to Australia can end our conversation.
Toby Price is nothing short of a living legend, but as a rallying fan you may not know too much about him. Beyond the basics, I didn’t either.
Twice a winner of the prestigious Dakar Rally on two wheels, this year he made the switch to four as part of a career shift to cars – and in January, he’ll compete for Toyota Gazoo Racing at the Dakar Rally in January.
But that move has included stage rallies in his native Australia as well as rally-raid. Price says rallying is something he’s “always been interested in”, despite initially being scared off by it.
“A few years ago, Sébastien Loeb scared the hell out of me in rally,” he smiles. “I was like, ‘Jeez, that’s one sport I’m not going to be good at’. And yeah, about seven years later, I decided to jump in one!”
It’s intriguing to learn Price can actually be scared by something, such is his zest for adventure. Although things are different if he’s the one behind the wheel, as we’re about to learn.
But it’s important to understand that Price’s “number one focus” is Dakar. He’s thoroughly enjoyed his opportunities driving a Mitsubishi and Subaru this year, but fundamentally it’s a chance to get more seat time in a car. The more he trains, the more accustomed he becomes and the more successful he’ll be in the DKR GR Hilux next January.
“I’m just enjoying the experience of it and having fun with it. Hopefully we can do some more of it,” Price says of his rallying.
“I’m just trying to get as much seat time as I can, so yeah it’s interesting times, that’s for sure. I thought after the two-wheel stuff finished up for us I’d be sitting at home twiddling my thumbs and quite bored, but I’m probably actually busier now than what I was doing the two-wheel stuff.”
I quip that Price does not seem like the kind of man who thrives when the adrenaline’s not pumping, which leads us to the elephant in the room: “Every time we jump in something, we’ll give 100% and try and see how we come out the other side which… we didn’t come out the other side of the Adelaide Hills Rally too well…”
There’s a strong likelihood you’ve seen the onboard from this crash. At high speed, Price and co-driver Holly Kilbride leave the road through a fence and barrel-roll numerous times in a terrifying shunt that wrecked the car, but mercifully left both crew members unharmed.
It’s scary enough to watch, so how must it have felt for real?
“For me it was just basically one very violent washing machine with like a V8 motor on the thing spinning you in there flat out! That’s pretty much what it was like,” Price says.
Remember what I said about him being cut from a very different cloth?
I experienced my first accident in a rally car this year – a substantial one but nothing on the scale of Price’s. I walked out of that wondering if the joy rallying provides is worth it if this can be the end result.
Price however…
“It’s not enjoyable,” he clarifies, “but at the end of the day it kind of was…
“I climbed out of the car and I’m like ‘Man, I didn’t even break a finger!'”
It’s a superb perspective only few of us possess, but easier to understand once you peel back the layers and consider where Price has come from.
“Rallying is night and day different to racing a motorcycle,” he explains. “But there’s similarities in what I would try and do on a motorcycle, the lines and stuff, where I’d be trying to position myself a little bit is very similar to the rally stuff.
Price's Mitsubishi didn't look like this at the end of the Adelaide Hills Rally...
“What I love about rallying the most, and what’s got me hooked, is how pinpoint precise you have to be. All it takes is one tiny little blink in the communication in the car or a mind lapse on myself and that was the end result there [when we crashed].
“Like we had a crest nine right and yeah I basically gave the input of a nine right but because of the speed difference from doing recce to the actual car – we recce it at 60km/h and we left the road at 140km/h, so yeah that’s a big difference. And that side of it’s got me very intrigued but then the safety aspect of it.
“If that was a motorcycle I’d still be laying in Adelaide now in a hospital bed broken, and I climbed out of that car and I didn’t even have a bruise on me. That part of it my body really enjoys, but in between my ears somewhere I still consider myself a motorcycle guy.
“The biggest thing now I’ve just got to worry about is that you have a co-driver with you and luckily enough, Holly came out of it all good. Definitely had some whiplash and things like that, but nothing broken on her either and so that’s the other aspect is that I’m used to beating the s*** out of myself and I’m not worried about breaking an arm, breaking a leg or being bruised up or anything, but when it’s somebody else’s life in your hands that’s another aspect you need to consider too. It’s a different game, that’s for sure.”
Where experiencing an accident like that would deter most from continuing, it’s actually spurred Price on.
Price was thrilled to walk away from this without a scratch on his body
“I actually love rally sport a hell of a lot more after a big crash like that because I walked away from it and didn’t even have a bruise on myself. I got a little small cut on my cheek and that was probably from the glass on the front windscreen,” he explains.
“Now I’m like really hooked on the sport. You can leave a road at 140km/h and come out of it perfectly fine. Yes, the car’s destroyed, but it’s basically fried my brain like how it’s even possible to be able to walk out of something like that.
“Like you say, that should scare anybody away and go ‘s*** I don’t want to do that again, like that was crazy’. But if I could line up next week, I’d go again.”
No pair of sentences will better capture Price’s character than that. He embodies the mantra that life is for living.
But does he want to live his life for rallying?
“At this stage, I’m very new,” he responds. “I think that was my sixth rally that I’d done. Geez yeah if I could get in a WRC car, sign me up. I’ll be there tomorrow morning with my suit ready to go. But I’m just taking baby steps with it for sure.
“I’m really enjoying the experience of it and loving it. I think once I get a few more under my belt, and if I get my head wrapped around it a little bit more… I’ve done the pacenote stuff from Baja racing, but the pacenote system we run in Baja is completely different to what you’d run in a rally car.
“You’re out by five meters or 10 meters on a rally note, and that’s a big difference – and that costs you seconds or it costs you going off the road. That’s the crazy part to it, that everything has to be very accurate.
“Like I say, the main focus of what I’m trying to do is just get a lot more seat time in different vehicles to combine it all to get ready for a Dakar Rally. I guess if Dakar Rally doesn’t really work out then maybe a rally car would be something I pursue a bit more and see if I can have a crack at that and have a good go at that. So it’s definitely interesting times.
“I don’t know, we’ll wait and see what happens and if any offers come our way I’ll put my hand up for it for sure.”
What I can say with confidence is it would be rallying’s loss if we didn’t see more of Price. His charismatic approach reminds me of some legends no longer with us, namely Ken Block and of course Colin McRae.
But he’s a good guy too. Just days after his accident – and a cameo in the upcoming Gymkhana movie with Travis Pastrana – some wildfires were affecting the Brisbane area where he lives.
Price became a fire fighter for a couple of days in October
Using his bulldozer, Price placed some fire breaks to protect his property but stepped up to help the community too.
“I knew one of the guys that were working on the fire group there and he knew I had a dozer to basically build my motocross tracks, my rally tracks and everything so he’s like ‘hey do you mind helping and trying to push some fire breaks in and try and slow this fire down?'” Price recalls.
“All of a sudden then I had a fireman’s hat on! So I went from rolling the car to being in Gymkhana with Travis Pastrana to then being a firefighter – mate trust me the last two and a half three weeks has been a whirlwind for sure! A lot of different stuff going on.
“Like I say I don’t sit at home and twiddle my thumbs!”
If Toby Price had a blurb, that must surely be it.
Words:Luke Barry
Tags: Dakar 2026, Toby Price
Publish Date November 20, 2025 DirtFish 
https://dirtfish-editorial.s3-accelerate.amazonaws.com/2025/11/b4nPewi0-SI202501070810-780x520.jpg November 20, 2025
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