Henk Lategan was surely motivated after moving to Toyota Gazoo Racing’s flagship team and winning on his home turf, and he’s ready to take the title fight to Nasser Al-Attiyah. To this end, Lategan drew first blood in the BP Ultimate Rally-Raid Portugal’s opening stage, beating Al-Attiyah and crucially collecting five stage points.

Making life the slightest bit easier for Lategan in his points pursuit, Al-Attiyah was eventually relegated from second behind him to eighth for the day because of 3:20 in penalties. Al-Attiyah, who won the Prologue, initially finished a minute and 37 seconds back of Lategan but had time added because he had gone through the third transfer zone too quickly.

Transfer Zone 3 was a one-kilometer tarmac strip situated between KM 230 and 231, which all teams must complete within the ballpark of two minutes. However, Al-Attiyah sped through the section in just 40 seconds, drawing a speeding penalty.

With Al-Attiyah tumbling down the order, Lategan’s fellow Hiluxes moved up. Lucas Moraes was promoted to P2 and 1:51 back of Lategan, while João Ferreira was a second behind Moraes in third. Saood Varaiawa and Yazeed Al-Rajhi completed the Hilux top five lockout.

It very well could’ve been a Toyota 1–2–3–4–5–6 if not for Al-Attiyah’s Dacia teammate Sébastien Loeb finishing sixth instead. Toyota driver Juan Cruz Yacopini was seventh and just 38 seconds behind Loeb, with his final position instead sandwiching him between all three Dacia drivers. Al-Attiyah was eighth and four seconds behind Yacopini while Cristina Gutiérrez sat ninth.

Seth Quintero certainly would’ve liked to join his TGR teammates at the front. Unfortunately, a brake disc broke 84 kilometers into the stage and dropped him to 32nd in Ultimate. Fellow Toyota drivers Marcos Baumgart and Eryk Goczał also encountered trouble, the former’s Hilux rolling onto its side.

Daniel Schröder’s Volkswagen Amarok lost an hour because of a crank sensor issue.

“Henry and I did fix it at the end so we could continue but lost a lot of time,” Schröder stated. “After that, we had a good run but had some dust. Tomorrow is a new day.”

As Toyotas reigned on the FIA side, Honda was desperate to do the same in FIM. It probably would’ve happened if it wasn’t for the fact that the man standing in their way is the guy who remains undefeated in 2025.

After winning the Prologue, Daniel Sanders was far and away the best rider. He cleared Honda’s Adrien Van Beveren and Tosha Schareina by 0:58 and 1:22, respectively. Even his KTM teammate Edgar Canet finished ahead of Honda’s Ricky Brabec and Skyler Howes despite being in a lower class.

Brabec and Howes admitted the dust kicked up from the lead bikes made it tough to gain ground, especially as they had to work their ways through the order.

“Our rear starting position of 11th wasn’t really ideal,” said Howes. “I got caught behind a couple of guys that really dusted me out for a while, but I think everyone kind of had the same situation out there. The dust was brutal for everyone. I had a clean run, not perfect of course, but I rode well, I felt fine out there on the bike and I had a lot of fun so that’s what matters. We had to repeat the Prologue again backwards and it was much better today, they’d made it all flat, watered it and then we were first out so we could make the lines out there.”

Their new Rally2 counterparts had an unlucky Wednesday. Preston Campbell finished fifth in class, but “made a pretty big mistake in the sand” in the closing stretch that caused him to crash. Martim Ventura caught Canet early on but a clutch failure eventually cost him 40 minutes, which he attributed to using it too much.

The dust also claimed victims like Justin Gerlach, who crashed at KM 9.3 after skidding out of a turn he couldn’t see with everything being kicked around. He hurt his shoulder in the accident, for which he took ibuprofen in order to complete the stage, and will continue the race after doctors couldn’t find any fractures on initial evaluation.

Tire strategy has proven to be a key factor in the bike battle so far. Red Bull KTM riders opted to use Michelin’s Desert Race Baja tires rather than the usual model since the former, being designed for motocross, better fits terrain that requires harder braking and throttle power. While this comes at the expense of wearing out faster, Portugal’s stages are shorter than the average desert rally.

Conversely, Honda is using their usual Metzeler Karoo 4 tires.

“I think the rest of this race is going to get pretty interesting with the tires,” Howes opined. “Everyone is smoking their tires and some of these guys chose to run knobby tires, so we’ll see how this week shapes up. It might shake some things up a little bit and make the racing really exciting.”

Stage 1 winners

FIA

Class	Overall	Number	Driver	Team	Total Time
Ultimate	1	202	Henk Lategan	Toyota Gazoo Racing	2:30:21
Challenger	11	308	Mattias Ekström	EKS RX	2:37:23
SSV	18	408	Luís Portela*	BP Ultimate Adventure Team	2:42:00

FIM

Class	Overall	Number	Rider	Team	Total Time
RallyGP	1	4	Daniel Sanders	Red Bull KTM Factory Racing	2:38:53
Rally2	6	73	Edgar Canet	Red Bull KTM Factory Racing	2:43:34
Rally3	18	58	Thomas Zoldos	Thomas Zoldos	3:01:32
Quad	29	174	Gaëtan Martinez	CFMOTO Thunder Racing Team	3:16:26
E-Bike	48	17	Pedro Bianchi Prata*	Offroad Center Bianchi Prata	7:42:16

Leaders after Stage 1

Prologue results are not included in FIA times, so Stage 1 winners are their overall leaders.

FIM

Class	Overall	Overall	Rider	Team	Total Time
RallyGP	1	4	Daniel Sanders	Red Bull KTM Factory Racing	2:43:40
Rally2	6	73	Edgar Canet	Red Bull KTM Factory Racing	2:48:23
Rally3	18	58	Thomas Zoldos	Thomas Zoldos	3:06:36
Quad	29	174	Gaëtan Martinez	CFMOTO Thunder Racing Team	3:21:51
E-Bike	48	17	Pedro Bianchi Prata*	Offroad Center Bianchi Prata	7:47:47

Featured image credit: Eduardo Almeida / Edophoto / DPPI / ASO