The first leg of the Marathon Stage was a masterclass for Toyota Gazoo Racing. Seth Quintero finished fourth to take the South African Safari Rally overall lead, while TGR’s South African subsidiary finished first and second.

Penalties remained a constant theme, and this time affected the FIA stage winner. Guillaume de Mévius set the fastest time but missed a waypoint, costing him two minutes and dropping him to third. Guy Botterill was promoted to the stage victory ahead of TGRSA teammate Saood Variawa, the two separated by just 55 seconds.

Following his penalty, de Mévius was third and 53 seconds back. Still, he had three minutes on Quintero to spoil a Toyota Gazoo podium sweep.

Quintero’s TGR colleague and Stage 1 winner Henk Lategan had a tricky Tuesday as he finished 13th, dropping him to fifth overall. Of course, there is still plenty of racing to go and he remains just two minutes off the leader. Brian Baragwanath is just 13 seconds back of Quintero.

“The first two thirds were okay because there were some actual roads to follow and then the navigation got really difficult,” Lategan explained. “There was no road in some places, just really long grass that you had to go through and it made it very difficult to open the road. I think we slowed down a bit towards the end, just to make sure we get through clean. Hopefully we can have a better road position for tomorrow; if the terrain is like this then it will be difficult to open the road again.”

Former Dakar Rally winners Nasser Al-Attiyah and Giniel de Villiers both got 15 minutes of penalties for missing waypoints, as did Jan Kraaij. Fouché Blignaut had a rough day in the penalty department with 33 minutes, 17 for not hitting a checkpoint and 16 for speeding. The SSV side wasn’t safe either with Claude Fournier and Domingo Román respectively receiving 15- and 17-minute additions.

Mário Franco received a two-minute speeding penalty that cost him the SSV stage win to Alexandre Pinto. However, he still finished second and 12 minutes ahead of Richard Aczel to take the class’ overall lead.

Mathieu Serradori retired from the stage while running top five due to a broken clutch; he had also suffered an intake manifold leak on Tuesday. Jayden Els, who impressed in Stage 1, was forced to bow out after the turbo blew, which Red-Lined CEO Terence Marsh noted “hasn’t happened before.” The Mini of João Ferreira suffered a differential mount failure, while the steering rod on Benoit Fretin’s Century broke. Johan van Staden rolled his Renault Duster. Since Stages 2 and 3 are marathon legs, those who could not get their cars to the marathon camp, the latter rendering them unable to start or finish the third stage, will not be allowed to rejoin the race.

Like Toyota on the car side, KTM enjoyed a 1–2 finish in bikes with Daniel Sanders and Luciano Benavides close together: Benavides finished just 32 seconds behind Sanders and over four minutes clear of Honda’s remaining riders. Sanders briefly got lost 30 kilometers in, costing him a minute, before getting back on track to win. Sanders’ main points rival Tosha Schareina did not start the stage due to a hand injury he suffered on Tuesday.

Stage 1 bike victor Ross Branch finished last in RallyGP after hitting a “large bird” that emerged from the nearby fields, which damaged the oil cooler.

Despite taking a wrong turn and running over a barbed-wire fence two kilometers into the stage, resulting in a flat tire that he had to stop to fix, Antanas Kanopkinas won for Quads.

Stage 2 winners

FIA

Class	Overall	Number	Driver	Team	Total Time
Ultimate	1	211	Guy Botterill	Toyota Gazoo Racing South Africa	3:12:36
Challenger	18	301	Nicolás Cavigliasso	BBR Motorsport	3:32:39
SSV	32	401	Alexandre Pinto	Old Friends Rally Team	3:46:55

FIM

Class	Overall	Number	Rider	Team	Total Time
RallyGP	1	4	Daniel Sanders	Red Bull KTM Factory Racing	3:40:30
Rally2	6	73	Edgar Canet	Red Bull KTM Factory Racing	3:51:01
Quad	21	173	Antanas Kanopkinas	CFMOTO Thunder Racing Team	4:43:47

Leaders after Stage 2

FIA

Class	Overall	Number	Driver	Team	Total Time
Ultimate	1	204	Seth Quintero	Toyota Gazoo Racing	5:49:23
Challenger	19	308	David Zille	BBR Motorsport	6:16:55
SSV	34	407	Mário Franco	Franco Sport	6:59:15

FIM

Class	Overall	Number	Rider	Team	Total Time
RallyGP	1	4	Daniel Sanders	Red Bull KTM Factory Racing	6:34:46
Rally2	8	73	Edgar Canet	Red Bull KTM Factory Racing	6:54:21
Quad	17	174	Gaëtan Martinez	CFMOTO Thunder Racing Team	8:22:50

Featured image credit: Edoardo Bauer / Edophoto / DPPI / ASO