Stage: 305km, liaison:213km
Flying under the radar after a transponder malfunction, Guillaume de Mevius and Mathieu Baumel won the opening stage of Dakar ’26 in their X-Raid Mini JCW, beating Nasser Al-Attiyah/Fabian Lurquin in the leading Dacia Sandrider by a mere 40 seconds.
The Belgian was in fine spirits after the opening salvo; “Winning a stage always feels good, but it wasn’t really our strategy for the day. Still, it’s a positive sign because we didn’t feel we had the outright pace to take the stage. Tomorrow, Mathieu and I will be opening, and I’m very happy about that. Our approach is different from the others. We’re a bit on our own in this Dakar. We’ll ride our way and, if we win stages, all the better, and we’ll manage to have the best possible day the next stage. With Mathieu on my right, I’m not worried about opening a special. But of course, there is strategy involved, and we’ll need to stay mindful for what comes next.”
Al-Attiyah, the five-time Dakar winner said: “We had a good pace and could have pushed harder, but when we saw Sébastien Loeb with two flat tyres, we decided to be cautious and avoid puncturing ourselves. When Guillaume de Mévius passed us, we stayed behind him and later chose to attack and move ahead. Finishing second is good. For tomorrow, it’s also positive. Well start three minutes behind Guillaume and can push from there.”
One of a number of standout drives came from the Czech pairing of Martin Prokop and Viktor Chytka who brought their privateer Ford Raptor home in third position, equally their best result on the legendary event in 2021 and 2022.
The day belonged to Mattias Ekstrom and Emil Bergkvist in their Ford Racing Raptor, who led the stage from the 70km mark almost to the end; after the 260km mark, they eased up and ended fourth overall but only 1:38 off the lead. Was it a conscious decision to avoid running first on the road?
Another standout drive came from Marek Goczal and Maciej Martin who were the leading Toyota in the field and fifth in the stage rankings! They ran second across the 215km mark in their older generation Toyota Hilux, ending 16 seconds clear of Carlos Sainz/Lucas Cruz in their factory Raptor.
The 2024 Dakar Rookie of the Year, Guy Botterill and co-driver Oriol Mena brought their Toyota Gazoo Racing SA Hilux home a superb seventh, a fraction over two minutes off the lead.
Nani Roma/Alex Haro and Mitch Guthrie/Kellon Walch grabbed eighth and ninth respectively for Ford Racing while Sebastien Loeb/Edouard Boulanger recovered from the double puncture to round out the top ten.
One of the pre-event favourites, Henk Lategan and Brett Cummings started first on the road and finished in 17th position in their Toyota Gazoo Racing W2RC Hilux, having dropped just under seven minutes to the leaders.
Botswana rider Ross Branch dominated the RallyGP bike category aboard his Hero Moto 450 Rally, only to be docked six minutes for speeding, dropping to seventh. This let Spanish rookie Édgar Canet through to claim his maiden top bike class stage win ahead of the 2025 W2RC champion Daniel Sanders.
Overall, Canet leads Sanders by a minute and five seconds with Brabec third from Schareina, Benavides, Cornejo, Branch and van Beveren.
Discussion about this post