Toyotas & Hondas on top, mad Dakar ride continues
Dakar’s fourth day of Car racing once again brought extreme fluctuations in fortunes and results as South African Gazoo Toyota crew Henk Lategan and Brett Cummings dominated. The bike race was among the closest days ever as Tosha Schareina took the day to tie with teammate Ricky Brabec for the lead.
Overdrive Hilux duo Lategan and Cummings jumped from eleventh overnight to lead overall on Wednesday’s tough 452 km haul to the no-service overnight bivouac on a separate route to the motorcycles. They did just as American Ford crew Mitch Guthrie and Kellon Walch and had done to hop from fourteenth to the lead on Tuesday. Guthre and Walch dropped back to thirteenth on Wednesday as the fortune of favourable starting positions fell on the Toyota army on a day without motorcycle tracks to follow.
Like it was for Ford on Tuesday, no less than seven Toyotas filled the top ten with the best of the Fords only eleventh. Lategan and Cummings were imperious, taking seven minutes out of nearest challengers, Qatari five-time Dakar winner, Nasser Al-Attiyah, and Fabian Lurquin Dacia Sandrider. Impressive Polish brothers Goczal, Eryk and Szymon Gospodarczyk and Marek and Maciej Marton ended third and fourth in their Toyota Hiluxes from French nine-time World Rally Champion Sébastien Loeb and Édouard Boulanger’s Dacia, and another of the Goczal Hilux dynasty, Mical alongside Diego Ortega.
Baragwanath impressed for Century
Aussie former bike winner Toby Price and Armand Monleon ended seventh in their Overdrive Gazoo Hilux ahead of on form South Africans Brian Baragwanath and Leonard Cremer’s Century Factory CR-7. South African Champion Saood Variawa and Frenchman Francois Cazalet’s SVR Gazoo Toyota Hilux followed ahead of ever-impressive Frenchmen, Mathieu Serradori and Loïc Minaudier’s Made in SA Century Factory CR-7 and American Seth Quintero and Andrew Short in the third Overdrive Gazoo Hilux.
Factory Ford Raptor crews, Mattias Ekström and Emil Bergkvist and Carlos Sainz and Lucas Cruz followed in twelfth from Spanish lady hero Laia Sanz and Mario Gerini’s Ebro Century CR-7 and Nani Roma and Álex Haro’s Ford. Without those bike tracks to follow, the first crews on the road suffered as they struggled to find the way. Guthrie and Walch, Czech Ford privateers Martin Prokop and Viktor Chytka and South African Guy Botterill and Spaniard Oriol Mena’s SVR Gazoo Hilux ended 23rd, 24th and 27th.
The day started with Loeb leading Variawa, Lategan and Baragwanath at the first waypoint. Until Lategan took over with Al Attiyah in chase and that’s how it continued as the rest were left to squabble over third. It was not all champagne and roses for Toyota, however. 2025 winners, home hero Yazeed Al-Rajhi and Timo Gottschalk bowed out after their Gazoo Hilux hit trouble to end any dreams of a back to back victory.
Variawa is right in there too
So, Lategan now leads Al Attiyah by four minutes overall, with Ford men Ekstrom and Sainz fourth and fifth, and Serradori a brilliant fifth from Variawa, Roma and Loeb in eighth. If the opening days are anything to go by, a twenty minute lead in nowhere near safe, and with the above crews now starting first on Thursday, their prospects of maintaining the advantage seem slim with the top eight cars split by less than those 20 minutes.
Further back, the leading T4 Side by Sides and T3 Challengers were involved in a mighty scrap. US T4 lad Brock Heger’s Can AM led Taurus T3 quartet, Nicolas Cavigliasso, Pau Navarro, Dani Akeel, and Yasir Seaidan on the stage after Tuesday T3 winner Puck Klaasen lost half an hour. Overall, Seaidan led Navarro and Cavigliasso in Challenger, and Heger was ahead of Xavier de Soultrait and Hunter Miller in the Side by Sides.
There was action in the Stock class when the rookie Defenders appeared to uncork their bottle. Mr. Dakar Stéphane Peterhansel and Michaël Metge led US lady Dakar star Sara Price and Sean Berriman and Lithuanian Rokas Baciuska and Oriol Vidal as the three Land Rovers opened the gap to the pursuing Land Cruisers. Baciuska led Peterhansel and Price overall. Martin Macik’s MMT and Vaidotas Zala’s Iveco fought for the Truck day lead, with Mitchel van den Brink’s Ivecos in chase. Macic also led van den Brink and Zala overall.
so close but Schareina is almost leads Bikes
Dakar’s 2026 Bike day proved absolutely sensational with the top four split by less than fifteen seconds to leave Honda duo and top two on the day, Tosha Schareina and Ricky Brabec tied in the overall lead. Motswana hero Ross branch enjoyed another consistent day to stay in the hunt overall, but South African Rally 2 star, Michael Dochery’s meteoric run came to an end with a broken wheel.
The first part of the first of two marathon stages in 2026, the Bikes raced a separate route to the Dakar Cars on Wednesday on a particularly challenging 417 kilometre routed to the deep desert bivouac in the Al’Ula area. Riders faced everything from tight, rocky canyons to sandy plateaus and long, fast sections wound together by the trickiest of navigation challenges.
Honda Factory CRF450 riders, Spaniard Schareina and Californian Brabec led the way through the first waypoint ahead of South African Rally 2 sensation Michael Docherty’s KTM and Tork Craft rider, Ross Branch on his Hero Moto 450 Rally. 2025 winner, World Champion and 2026 leader, Aussie Daniel Sanders sat sixth on his Factory KTM 450 Rally. Docherty and Branch then shared out the lead until just before mid-distance.
Ross Branch is very much in the mix
Then disaster struck Docherty, who was forced to stop with a damaged rear wheel to put paid to his hopes of the Rally 2 win. Michael had not been headed in class until then. That left Branch to contend with Honda trio Schareina, Brabec and another US rider, Skyler Howes, with Sanders, Chilean Hero Moto rider Ignacio Cornejo, Argentine Luciano Benavides’ KTM and French Honda man Adrien van Beveren all in the fray in what promised to be the closest Dakar Day result in years.
And that it was, as Schareina led Honda teammates Brabec and Howes to a red 1-2-3 with Branch just 14 seconds adrift of the lead in fourth for Hero. Sanders was fifth in what seemed an eternity, another two minutes behind from rookie KTM teammate Edgar Canet, van Beveren less than four minutes off winning teammate Schareina and South African Bradley Cox in tenth on his Sherco.
Frenchman Niels Theric meanwhile took his Chinese Kove machine to its maiden Rally 2 victory as he once again prevented US rider Preston Campbell from finally scoring Honda’s maiden victory in the class on his Factory CRF450. Pole Konrad Dabrowski’s KTM was third in Docherty’s absence. Tuesday winner Spaniard Josep Pedrero once again led the no-service ‘Malle Moto’ Original class on his KTM.
Theric’s Kove beat Honda to first Rally 2 win
Incredibly, it’s even closer overall, with Honda duo Tosha Schareina and Ricky Brabec provisionally tied in the lead after four days of racing. KTM trio Sanders, a minute, and a half adrift, Canet ten minutes further back, and Benavides another two behind, sit third, fourth and fifth from Botswana’s Branch and Skyler Howes, just seconds behind. Bradley Cox rides in tenth ahead of new Rally 2 leader Campbell.
Thursday’s second half of the first Marathon stage heads to Ha’il on another demanding 357 kilometre route. Your Dakar Daily Report is powered by Toyota Gazoo Racing and Tork Craft tools.
