STAGE 12 Highlights
Dakar 2026 | Stage 12 | AL HENAKIYAH > YANBU
- His plan worked. Yesterday, Ricky Brabec deliberately gave up the lead in the overall rankings to Luciano Benavides. It was not a crazy move but simply a strategic one, allowing Brabec to start six minutes behind his rival this morning, with the gap in the overall rankings limited to 23 seconds. With the American’s technical mastery, this was actually the safest way to secure a comfortable lead before the final stage, making it possible to rechristen tomorrow’s loop around Yanbu ‘Brabec Boulevard’. And that is exactly what happened: with his 13th stage victory and his second this year, the Honda rider not only swallowed up the 23 seconds in question like a shot of Monster energy drink but increased his lead to 3’43’’ over Benavides, meaning a third title is in sight for Ricky.
- The possibility of Luciano Benavides making a comeback on the final stage cannot be ruled out entirely. His brother Kevin achieved this feat in 2023 but at the time he was only 12 seconds behind Toby Price. Tomorrow, the Argentinean will start 3 minutes behind the new leader, but he will only have 105 kilometres available in which to catch up, a distance during which Brabec will pocket opener’s bonuses (up to 1’23’’ in total). The Red Bull KTM Factory Racing rider would therefore need to be supersonic to overturn the overall rankings in his favour.
- Skyler Howes and Adrien Van Beveren opened the way this morning but soon let the duellists battle it out at the front. The two Honda riders were clocked at over 24 and 13 minutes down respectively. The American slowing down did not prevent him from climbing one place in the rankings (to 4th), benefiting from Sanders‚ poor form, due to suffering from a shoulder injury, with the Australian now finding himself in 5th. The Frenchman is immediately behind Sanders, in 6th place, trailing by eight minutes.
- In the Rally 2 class, Tony Mulec took the overall lead yesterday and increased it further today to distance Preston Campbell by 6’12’’.
- He is one of those masters of their art who are discrete but have no equal when it comes to accomplishing their feats with panache. In order to arrive in Yanbu with the status of virtually unbeatable winner, Nasser Al Attiyah went all-out when a more measured approach would have been perfectly adequate. After being the 17th driver to start the special, the overall rankings leader (with an advantage of 8’ over Nani Roma) knew that he had a chance to improve his statistics. On completion of the 311 kilometres through the rocks and stones, the Qatari let his driving skill do the talking to add another stage victory to his roll of honour, no less than his 50th!
- In very different circumstances, Al Attiyah has joined Ari Vatanen and Stéphane Peterhansel as joint record holders for stage wins in the car category and, in his Dacia Sandrider, is now heading for a sixth overall triumph, which is just 105 kilometres away. Before this final parade (and why not a 51st stage win to surpass the other two giants?), he has now distanced Nani Roma’s Ford Raptor by 15’02’’, while the final occupant of the third step on the podium will be decided tomorrow between the two brands that have dominated the very end to the rally.
- Sébastien Loeb has enjoyed a second week of the rally that was more constructive than the first, to climb yesterday evening into a fragile third place, in light of Mattias Ekstrom’s skill when he decides to go on the offensive. And that is exactly what he did this morning! The Swede achieved the day’s 4th best time (behind Al Attiyah, Guthrie and Price) and especially gained 3’24’’ over his rival. Now Ekstrom finds himself in 3rd place at the wheel of his Ford Raptor but the battle is far from over. The Swedish driver will have to hang on during 105 km to his 29-second lead, while the French driver, who has never finished a Dakar anywhere else than on the podium, will start 9 minutes after him.
PERFORMANCE OF THE DAY: MAKE OR BREAK FOR FORD
Three Fords stood out yesterday at the end of stage 11: Mattias Ekstrom, Romain Dumas and Carlos Sainz, which was ideal this morning for Nani Roma, who was second overall with a 10-minute lead over his closest rival, Sébastien Loeb. The Frenchman was the 10th driver to start and so enjoyed an ideal position to hunt down his pray, with the hope of swooping in on the Catalan in the overall rankings to put his Sandrider behind the one driven by Nasser Al Attiyah on the eve of the finish. This fact had not escaped the American constructor’s team, which requested Romain Dumas to park up after the first metres of the special and wait for his team leader, so that he could follow him like his shadow throughout the stage. The Frenchman, driving a privately run Raptor, threw himself into this role up until the finishing line, which Roma crossed on three wheels, with his front axle unit dragging along the ground. After completing the special at 14:01’14’’, Nani had 2 hours 45 minutes to reach the bivouac in Yanbu 183 kilometres away. The Ford teams went about carrying out a ‘transplant’ between the two Raptors, which they completed within an on hour. This left Roma with less than one and a half hours to complete the link route before 16.47. Like in a Hollywood blockbuster, Roma ran out of fuel and had to rely on Laia Sanz towing him to the entrance to the bivouac where he clocked in just one minute late. After a few tears to evacuate the stress, Nani realised he had saved his 2nd place on the podium, in spite of a one-minute penalty. Since good news always comes in batches, before this thrilling finale, Mattias Ekstrom had managed, after opening the special, to finish with a time faster than Loeb’s, placing his Raptor on the overall podium 29 seconds ahead of the Dacia. On returning to the shores of the Red Sea, although they surfed on the razor’s edge, Ford did much better than avoid failure…
CRUSHING BLOW OF THE DAY: THE DREAM SLIPS AWAY FOR BENAVIDES
Mathematically, the title has not totally slipped from the grasp of Luciano Benavides. However, the Red Bull KTM Factory Racing rider, who led the overall rankings in the morning by just 23 seconds ahead of Ricky Brabec, has perhaps missed out on the opportunity of winning the Dakar, which would have been his first triumph on an international level rally-raid. The Argentinean was caught out by Ricky Brabec’s tactical move, whereby the American slowed down at the end of the special to begin stage 12 behind Benavides, who was unable to withstand his rival’s charge through the 311 kilometres against the clock on the day’s menu. The 2023 world champion spared no effort to maintain his position, opening the way for the entire second half of the stage at a steady pace, without pushing the boundaries of what was reasonable on largely rocky terrain. At the finishing line, it was a bitter pill to swallow for Benavides, who is unlikely to attempt the impossible tomorrow to make up the deficit of 3’43’’ to the American rally leader. In any case, he is well on his way to accomplishing his best performance ever on the Dakar, having previously finished no higher than 6th place, in 2023 and 2020.
STAT OF THE DAY: 50
It was likely to happen and Nasser Al Attiyah’s accomplishment of a half-century could even have happened earlier. It was probably not a calculated move, but the Qatari chose the day before the final stage, the day on which he secured a virtually certain triumph in the race’s premium category, to equal the record of stage victories that he now shares with Ari Vatanen and Stéphane Peterhansel. This achievement provides the opportunity to look back at the fantastic series of victories accomplished by his two predecessors.
Ari Vatanen began his winning streak on his first participation on the Dakar in 1987, winning 3 stages before claiming the first of his four titles. It was then in 2004 that the Finnish driver went on to claim his 50th stage success in Er Rachidia (on stage 4), on his return to the Dakar at the wheel of a Nissan pick-up. His heyday was long behind him by then, having grabbed his 49th stage win in 1996.
Stéphane Peterhansel’s story is very different because he had already won the Dakar 6 times on two wheels, with 33 specials under his belt, before switching to four wheels in 1998. It was during the 2000 edition (Dakar-Cairo) that he won his first stage in a car, in Mali at Kayes, driving a Mega. His fiftieth success dates back to 2024. At the time, ‘Mister Dakar’ was driving an Audi RS Q e-tron, in which he suffered greatly on the first stage, losing more than half an hour on the route to Al Henakiyah. However, the very next day, he made up for it by bringing up victory number fifty. For Al Attiyah, it is still a work in progress. …
TRUCKS ACTION
MEGA-GALLERY
Quelle / Source / Pictures / Bilder: Dakar Rally, A.S.O
