The Taurus T3 Max has dominated the Challenger leaderboards all race long, but Stage #9 was by far its finest outing of the Dakar Rally. After coming close so many times, Tauruses swept the entire top ten in the class on Monday with Pau Navarro leading the way en route to his first stage win in the T3 car.

Navarro, who joined BBR Motorsport after his deal to drive Past-Racing’s Ford Ranger T1+ fell through, set the fastest time on Monday. Paul Spierings and David Zille joined him on the class podium for the stage, the latter losing some time to a broken brake line at the end. Gonçalo Guerreiro’s fourth meant the top four each came from different teams despite being in the same cars: Spierings races for his own team while Zille is affiliated with DaklaPack Rallysport, whereas Guerreiro comes from Red Bull Off-Road Junior Team.

Gurreiro’s teammate Corbin Leaverton was fifth ahead of Khalifa Al-Attiyah, overall class leader Nicolás Cavigliasso, Abdulaziz Al-Kuwari, Adam Kuś, and Dania Akeel. Despite a one-minute speeding penalty, Akeel narrowly beat the G Rally OT3 of Alexandre Giroud by 33 seconds for tenth to complete the top ten sweep.

A Taurus has swept the Challenger podium in all nine legs to date, with its previous best outing being a 1–2–3–4–5–6–7–8–9 in Stage #6 that was spoiled by Puck Klaassen’s OT3 finishing tenth. Another Taurus win in any of the final four legs would equal the nine recorded in 2024 en route to the class victory with Cristina Gutiérrez.

“We talked before the stage and decided to go for the win today,” said Navarro. “It was a different strategy for us and we pushed and pushed and pushed. I’m happy with the stage and even happier if we’ve won it.”

Honda probably wished it could have done the same on the bike side, but Luciano Benavides had other plans. The 2023 champion and his KTM beat back a Honda onslaught and was the only non-Japanese bike in the top five ahead of Adrien Van Beveren, Tosha Schareina, Ricky Brabec, and Skyler Howes.

Pablo Quintanilla, Honda’s fifth rider who finished third on Sunday, suffered a concussion when he hit an edge at KM 130 and was thrown off his CRF450. Benavides and Van Beveren both stopped to provide assistance.

“I was on a high speed piste which had many intersections and one of them had a really high edge,” Quintanilla explained. “I was pushing and saw it at the last minute so I couldn’t avoid it. I hit it very very fast and that is the last thing that I remember. When I woke up, Adrien was there helping me. It was quite a hard situation because of the pain and also because at that moment I realised that I was out of the race.

“It’s a really sad feeling, we worked a lot for this race, we put a lot of effort, time and energy to do our best and to go out of the race like this is a very bad feeling. Luckily I’m okay, it was just a big concussion, my body is a bit painful but there’s nothing broken.”

Fellow RallyGP competitor Daniel Nosiglia also retired after crashing. In Rally2, Juan Puga exited with an engine failure at KM 390. Misfortune struck the Dakar Classic as well as 2023 winner Juan Morera’s Porsche 959 struggled to climb a particularly high dune until the radiator fan broke; he opted not to get it repaired and continue with his hopes of winning now dashed.

Like the Taurus in Challenge, Ultimate saw some likeminded finishers among the leaders. Henk Lategan rebounded from his frustrating Stage #7 by leading a Toyota Gazoo Racing South Africa 1–2 with Guy Botterill just 1:47 behind.

Century Racing, who has endured a chaotic race highlighted (lowlighted?) with a rest day rebuild in which 30 percent of the parts were replaced, rebounded with Mathieu Serradori and Brian Baragwanath placing third and fourth, five seconds apart. Both cars ran different rear suspension setups as the team continues to fine-tune the CR7; Baragwanath’s setup was found to perform better in camel grass on Sunday.

“If there’s a place where we can find performance, it’s definitely the rear suspension, but it’s risky to make big changes without having the possibility to test at night,” commented Century boss Julien Hardy. “So baby steps everyday for now.”

Ricardo Porém’s MMP T3 had a scare when the steering column broke. Navigator Nuno Sousa stepped up by hooking a suspension arm to it and driving it 30 kilometers to the nearest paved road for their team to fix it.

Stage #8 winners

FIA

Class	Overall	Number	Driver	Team	Time
Ultimate	1	211	Henk Lategan	Toyota Gazoo Racing South Africa	4:51:54
Challenger	28	304	Pau Navarro	BBR Motorsport	5:22:29
SSV	44	407	Jeremías Gonzalez Ferioli*	Can-Am Factory Team	5:34:06
Stock	104	500	Akira Miura*	Team Land Cruiser Toyota Auto Body	6:36:25
Truck	33	600	Martin Macík Jr.*	MM Technology	5:26:52

FIM

Class	Overall	Number	Rider	Team	Time
RallyGP	1	4	Daniel Sanders	Red Bull KTM Factory Racing	4:50:46
Rally2	6	22	Michael Docherty	BAS World KTM Racing Team	4:57:14

Other

Class	Number	Competitor	Team	Points
Dakar Classic	700	Carlos Santaolalla	Factory Tub	32
Mission 1000	1030, 1040	Yoshio Ikemachi, Jordi Juvanteny	HySE, KH-7 Ecovergy Team	20

Leaders after Stage #8

FIA

Class	Overall	Number	Driver	Team	Time
Ultimate	1	211	Henk Lategan	Toyota Gazoo Racing South Africa	42:05:02
Challenger	14	301	Nicolás Cavigliasso	BBR Motorsport	46:08:33
SSV	19	425	Brock Heger*	Sébastien Loeb Racing	47:33:59
Stock	90	501	Ronald Basso*	Team Land Cruiser Toyota Auto Body	66:59:03
Truck	18	600	Martin Macík Jr.*	MM Technology	46:45:57

FIM

Class	Overall	Number	Rider	Team	Time
RallyGP	1	4	Daniel Sanders	Red Bull KTM Factory Racing	44:26:52
Rally2	8	73	Edgar Canet	Red Bull KTM Factory Racing	45:47:54

Other

Class	Number	Competitor	Team	Points
Dakar Classic	700	Carlos Santaolalla	Factory Tub	526
Mission 1000	1040	Jordi Juvanteny	KH-7 Ecovergy Team	180

Credit: Charly Lopez / ASO