Stage 10: Marathon Refuge – Bisha 420km, liaison 50km
The 2026 Dakar Rally continues to throw up surprises. Mathieu Serradori claimed his second ever stage win while Loic Minaudier, his co-driver claimed his first scalp, along with a historic first victory for the Century Racing CR-7.
The thrilled Frenchman said: “We hardly left anything on the track today! I was mad this morning and we went a bit too fast in the first 30 kilometres. Loïc told me to calm down or risk disaster, he was right to do so. I needed this one, it makes me really happy. We won the Dakar two-wheel-drive ranking three times and today we proved Century can put together a competitive, reliable car. It’s Christmas come early, it’s awesome.”
Three Dacia Sandriders filled second to fourth with Nasser Al-Attiyah/Fabian Lurquin (+6’12”) while Sebastien Loeb/Edouard Boulanger and Lucas Moraes/Denis Zenz came home 34 seconds apart.
Despite finishing on the podium, Loeb had a tough day in the office; “We made one or two navigation errors. At some waypoints we turned a little, changed a couple of wheels, dealt with a jam and a slow puncture I’d been carrying for 80 km, which I finally changed 20 km from the finish. Overall, another tricky special, but it needed to be finished properly, which we did.”
Guy Botterill and Oriol Mena finally had a good day again in their Toyota Gazoo Racing SA Hilux, claiming fifth place followed by Henk Lategan/Brett Cummings in the TGR W2RC-entered Hilux.
A frustrated Lategan rattled off his woes at the stage finish. “I don’t know what to say any more. Everything that could go wrong has gone wrong in this race. We lost power steering yesterday, ran out of fuel today and got lost twice missing waypoints. This isn’t how you win the Dakar. Toby helped me out, Seth stopped this morning to cover my back, I have amazing teammates and a fantastic car, but no luck. I’m really, really frustrated with this race. Everything that has happened to me in my previous four Dakars happened all at once in this edition. It’s unbelievable.”
When asked how his car, which looked decidedly worse for wear after stage nine, had performed, he said: “The car was perfect, it just looks bad. Mechanically it’s really good. It’s a Hilux – so they keep going. It just doesn’t go without fuel.”
The top Ford Raptor, in seventh place, belonged to Denis Krotov/Konstantin Zhiltsov who tied with Lategan on time but received a ten second speeding penalty. The leading factory-entered Raptor belonged to Mitch Guthrie/Kellon Walch, who ended two minutes ahead of the Chinese pair of Biaobiao Zhang and co-driver Wenke Ma in another stellar performance for the JJ Sport JJ3 T1+, the second top ten result for the Ford-powered brand in two days.
Martin Prokop and Viktor Chytka put in a mammoth effort after rolling their Raptor on stage nine, to fight back into the top ten.
The opening 46km stretch belonged to Al-Attiyah, with Serradori giving notice of his intent by slotting into second place. Mattias Ekstrom took the lead 50km down the road but by km 121, it was Serradori all the way to Bisha.
Joao Ferreira made a brief appearance in second at km 91 but after that, Al-Attiyah was the leading hunter.
Krotov, starting back in 82nd on the road, was on a belter, storming up the leaderboard and briefly held second at the 386km mark before falling back to seventh.
Navigation was tricky in the dunes and more than one top driver lost time looking for a waypoint.
Carlos Sainz had a bad day, losing 15 minutes looking for a waypoint while Roma lost eight minutes for the same reason.
In the overall standings, Al-Attiyah increased his lead to 12 minutes over Lategan who is under pressure from Nani Roma for the provisional runner-up position with 50 seconds between the Toyota and Ford crews.
In the RallyGP bike race, Adrien van Beveren and Ricky Brabec gave Honda a one-two with Luciano Benevides taking third from Skyler Howes.
Daniel Sanders, despite his proven handling skills, robust physique and proven navigational acumen at high speeds saw his lead go down the drain when he crashed and hurt his left shoulder 138 km into the special. “Chucky” soldiered on to the finish but lost nearly half an hour.
In the overall standings, Brabec took the lead with just 56 seconds in hand over Benevides, followed by Tosha Shareina and Sanders.
Image credit: A.S.O/Red Bull Content Pool
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