2025 Morocco Desert Challenge: Van den Brink completes three-peat, Bauds and Huzinks dominate, Sertilhanges steals victory
Besides being one of the young talents in the Dakar Rally’s Truck class, Mitchel van den Brink is proving himself to be more than capable in a Can-Am Maverick. He dominated the second half of the Morocco Desert Challenge to win its SSV class for the third year in a row.
Entering the MDC, the expectation was that SSV would be a renewed duel of Maverick Rs between van den Brink and Erik Van Loon. Van Loon had been the top side-by-side early in 2024 before being knocked out by a mechanical issue, which van den Brink capitalized upon. Unfortunately for Van Loon, the gremlins struck again and put him in an early deficit that he had to claw his way out of, then his race neded entirely in Stage 7 with a gearbox failure.
With Van Loon out of the picture again, van den Brink just had to avoid trouble. He cleared the Taurus T3 Max of Oscar Ral by nearly two hours to win both SSV and the T4 subcategory.
“We make an excellent team,” said van den Brink about himself and his navigator Bart van Heun following the final stage. “We didn’t make any mistakes during the entire rally. We are of course very satisfied and are looking forward to the celebration tonight.”
His father Martin came up just short on the Truck side, losing to Kay Huzink by 34 minutes. The older van den Brink’s IVECO Torpedo fell behind in the first half of the rally with engine issues and a broken shock. Attrition helped him greatly when Huzink’s cousin Gert retired from Stage 6 because of an onboard fire, but van den Brink was unable to pass the other Huzink.
Both Huzinks combined to win every stage for Trucks. Van den Brink was gracious in defeat, praising Kay for running a “solid race. We were close in terms of pace. Kay is a young driver and it’s nice because he was once trained by Mitchel.”
Lionel Baud and his daughter Lucie did not top the Cars class outright in any of the eight stages, but their Mini JCW 3.0d was consistent. That was more than enough to keep them atop the leaderboard throughout the race. X-raid teammate Maria Luís Gameiro, in her Mini debut, finished runner-up in T1+.
The Bauds beat the MD Optimus of fellow Dakar Rally regular Simon Vitse, who notched five stage wins. Michiel Becx won three stages in his Century CR7 but was taken out of overall contention just two legs in.
While the overall leaders for each four-wheeled category remained the same after the final day, the bikes saw a shakeup across the last two legs. Arnau Lledó battled with and Amaury Baratin and Nicolas Horeaux throughout the first six stages, and was holding a three-and-a-half-minute lead going into Stage 7 before crashing and breaking his clavicle.
Baratin won the penultimate stage to hold a 7:34 advantage over Valentin Sertilhanges. However, Sertilhanges claimed Stage 8 by 11:31 to beat Baratin for the win. Horeaux settled for third to complete a KTM 450 Rally podium sweep.
As a race unbeholden by the FIA’s stringent standards, the Morocco Desert Challenge also had some unusual faces alongside the standard rally raiders. Perhaps the most notable case is the Massey Ferguson tractor of Cédric Goumaz, such an oddity that it was lumped into Truck without a subcategory. Even then, it still survived the desert to finish fourth.
Others showed up in older machinery as 2025 was the first year with Vintage classes, designed for those built at least a decade before the inaugural MDC in 2015. Greg Gilson, the lone vintage bike with his 1980 Honda XLS 125, overcame an early exhaust issue to finish 14th overall. Pieter Peerlings entered the race in the six-wheeled Jules II Proto, which retired due to a broken control arm.
Brothers Cedric and Nicola Feryn, usually navigators but now sitting behind the wheel, entered the race in a Mercedes-Benz 2635 and Toyota Land Cruiser 100, respectively. It wasn’t an entirely clean affair as Cedric’s 34-year-old truck got stuck in Stage 1 and had to be pulled to safe by by Goumaz’s tractor while Nicola’s Land Cruiser broke down with an electrical problem just 30 kilometers from the race finish. Cedric came by and towed him to the finish.
Elsewhere in the Feryn Dakar Sport camp, Pascal Feryn finished runner-up in T1.1 to Magdalena Zajac. His teammate Koen Wauters led early before suffering nose damage in a hard landing. Feryn had his own issues that kept him from keeping pace with Zajac, the latter having also won T1.1 at the Africa Eco Race in January.
Dakar Truck veterans Gerard de Rooy and Janus Van Kasteren traded in their usual rides for a Can-Am Maverick R and Century CR7. The former finished fifth in T3 while the latter notched a sixth in T1+. Van Kasteren’s father also competed in a Can-Am.
Brothers Henk and Pim Klaassen alternated driving duties each day in their Taurus T3 Max. An engine failure dropped them out of two stages, but they managed to reach the finish.
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