Tough Breaks For American Teams at Dakar

A series of unfortunate events wound up costing American Honda rider Ricky Brabec the win in the motorcycle class of the 2026 Dakar rally, a race held for the seventh year in Saudi Arabia.

After two weeks of racing over countless miles of sand and rocks, Argentine Luciano Benavides, riding a KTM, edged out American Ricky Brabec’s Honda by two seconds, the narrowest margin in the history of the event.

It was just the final cruel twist of fate Dakar had to deal out.

“I have no idea why we lost, it makes no sense to me,” said two-time winner Brabec at the finish line, after he had congratulated Benavides.

Ah, but we have an idea. Several.

First was camels. Brabec came upon a herd he estimated at 50-strong way out in a rocky section of that day’s stage. He couldn’t go around them because of the big rocks on either side of the dirt road, he couldn’t go through them because camels are really big, and he couldn’t even honk a horn because race bikes don’t have horns.

“The camels were freakin’ in the road and I couldn’t go around them. I was like, ‘Damn, I don’t know what to do. I’m losing time right here.’ There were probably, like, 50 camels, right? So I’m like, ‘Dude I can’t go around, there’s, like, big black boulder rocks just everywhere,’ and I was like, ‘If I go out and try to risk going around the camels I’m gonna make it (the motorcycle) tip over, maybe smash something, twist an ankle or just something so stupid,’ so I just sat behind ‘em and I tried to get as close as I can and maybe they would shoo and go anywhere in the rocks. But yeah I was kinda bummed about this situation.”

Then, on another day’s stage, Brabec stopped again, this time to help a fallen competitor. Australian KTM rider Daniel Sanders crashed 138 kilometers into the second half of Wednesday's marathon stage from Wadi ad Dawasir to Bisha, breaking his collarbone and sternum, according to abc.au.

“I came over the dune and Tosh (Spanish Honda rider Tosha Schareina) came over the dune, and he (Sanders) was just kind of under his bike, stuck,” Brabec said. “So me and Tosh stopped. Tosh stopped at the top of the dune to make sure no one was coming to jump and land on him. Then I was down in the dune helping Daniel.”

He got that sorted out but, in the process, lost the lead. Sanders, being a tough Australian, got back on his bike… and finished the stage.

"We don't quit," Sanders said.

Nor did Brabec. He regained the lead in the following days and, until, just two kliks from the finish line, when he was in the lead by over three minutes and had only to cruise his Monster Energy Honda to the inflatable Red Bull arch and take his third Dakar win, something happened.

“I navigated well all day,” Brabec said. “One route note, right here, two kilometers from the finish, I don’t know. I took the wrong left. The route book showed one left, so I took the left. It put me in a bad situation, and here we are.”

On the four-wheeled side of Dakar, meanwhile, it was a Dacia that won. Dacias are one of the cheapest cars you can buy in Europe, and the one you give a big sigh over when they assign it to you at the car rental counter at Charles de Gaulle. The somewhat diminutive Dacia Sandrider prototype looked like a little bug, but won it all over the mighty 2026 Ford Raptor T1 Ultimate Dakar Rally car and the equally mighty (and last year’s winner) Toyota Hilux.

It helped that it was driven by Qatari driver Nasser Al Attiyah, who had already won Dakar five times, this year making six.

Ford showed up at Dakar with four factory entries, while an additional four privateers also drove Raptors. It was the first year Ford came as an official factory team.

The trucks, too, had been upgraded.

“The Ford Raptor T1+ itself represents the most complete expression yet of what we’ve learned through years of desert racing,” Ford said before the race. “It is lighter, more aerodynamically efficient, delivers dramatically improved visibility and control, and incorporates meaningful gains in suspension performance, cockpit access, and overall durability.”

In the early stages, Ford was doing well, swapping wins with Toyota’s Hilux trucks. But both Ford and Toyota didn’t show enough wins to last at the top of the leaderboard, and all the time Al Attiyah was moving up. While he won Stage 2, by his Stage 6 win, he seemed in strong contention to win it all. And despite Ford winning five stages and the prologue, navigation errors by Ford drivers, and smoother running by Al Attiyah throughout, meant the Qatari driver was the winner.

In SxS competition, as in Baja, it was American Brock Heger in the Loeb Fraymedia Motorsport Polaris RZR Factory Racing entry that claimed his second Dakar win in the class, after doing the same dominating dance in SCORE desert racing in Baja.

In the Stock class it was Defender Rally in its debut year, as drivers Rokas Baciuška and Oriol Vidal win in the Defender Dakar D7X‑R. Teammates Sara Price and Sean Berriman finished in second place, while ‘Mr Dakar’ Stéphane Peterhansel and co‑driver Mika Metge finished in fourth position in the Dakar Rally Stock class rankings.

“Dakar Rally was just incredible,” said Price. “We had a goal at the final stage to get to the finish line as a team together. So to see the whole Defender team sitting there at the finish line and all their excitement and emotions, it just shows what this is all about and what it means. To get this team to the finish line in P1 and P2 is just, wow, incredible.”

As was the whole two-week adventure. If you can’t get enough of this off-road stuff, the SCORE King Shocks San Felipe 250 starts March 25-29 in Baja. But that’s an entirely different kind of racing.