Girls just want to have fun, and they certainly are in the Rallye du Maroc’s Challenger class. For the first time since the World Rally-Raid Championship’s inception, a category now has multiple female stage winners in a given race as Puck Klaassen and Dania Akeel respectively claimed Stages 2 and 3.

In both cases, they capitalized on misfortune striking the leader. Klaassen took the lead from Khalifa Al-Attiyah in the closing stretch on Tuesday, then Akeel chased down Abdulaziz Al-Kuwari and Yasir Seaidan on Wednesday until the former fell off the pace and the latter bowed out with a mechanical issue. Paul Spierings moved up to second and was 2:20 behind Akeel.

Even if circumstantial, a stage win is obviously still a stage win. It is Akeel’s third of the 2025 season after notching one apiece at the Dakar Rally and Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge. She also became the first points-earning woman to win a class overall at the latter.

Klaassen placed sixth in Challenger for the day after losing the clutch and having a tire go down, though her finish moved her up to third overall in the class and six minutes behind new leader Pau Navarro. Akeel sits ninth, hampered by a rough Stage 2 in which she lost an hour to getting stuck in silt.

Spierings initially finished outside the top three but was moved back up on time credits because he and navigator Jan Pieter van der Stelt stopped to help Mathieu Feuvrier, who crashed, onto the medical helicopter. Another heli took Francesco Dracone’s co-driver Alessandro Verna out after he was dealing with a medical issue, prompting Dracone to complete the stage by himself though he was officially classified as a DNF.

Dracone was one of four retirements in Ultimate alongside Carlos Sainz, Michiel Becx, and Nathan Hayashi. Becx rolled his Century twice. Sainz bowed out with a technical issue while Nani Roma finished a disappointing 15th to lose the overall lead; Mattias Ekström carried the Ford M-Sport flag in their place and finished fifth, losing some time because he got stuck in the dust.

Hayashi’s Ford Bronco Raptor had been plagued by fuel system issues and was also hit by a T5 truck in Stage 1, so he sat out Tuesday’s leg to make repairs—which included new body panels and even a makeshift license plate—before rejoining. However, the Bronco only lasted about ten minutes before it gave out again.

His two stage DNFs officially knocked him out of the rally, but race organizers have allowed him to continue as an Open car since his team’s goal is to develop the Bronco for Dakar. Some teams have also been recruited to help design and install a better fuel system for racing in general.

“Things aren’t definitely working the way they’re supposed to and the way we were planning on. It’s difficult,” said Hayashi. “We’re going to try to figure this out, we’re going to take advantage of tonight, it might be a really long night. We got two more days left of racing and we’re hopeful that we can take advantage of those days.”

The stage also claimed a pair of former riders-turned-Challenger drivers in Pablo Copetti and Kevin Benavides. The former suffered a suspension failure while the latter’s turbo died.

While the buck stopped here for some drivers, Wednesday was also a nice bounceback for others. Ignas Daunoravičius had to work overnight to fix his bike after it was run over by a Hilux the day before, and climbed from his 82nd-place starting spot to finish 33rd in Rally2.

Kyle Chaney scored his first W2RC podium in third as part of a Can-Am Maverick R 1–2–3–4 for the SSV class, which he’ll gladly take after a flat took him out of contention for the win. Fellow American Hunter Miller crashed into a concrete pillar on the opposite side of a dune, but it didn’t damage his car as he placed fourth. Francisco López Contardo and Jeremías González Ferioli led the way as they did on Tuesday.

Newly crowned SSV champion Alexandre Pinto retired due to “problems we couldn’t solve on the course.”

In Ultimate, the top three were separated by just 57 seconds as Henk Lategan, still reeling with his title hopes out the window, beat TGR teammate Seth Quintero by 46 and Sébastien Loeb. Loeb took the overall lead from Lucas Moraes, who struggled to a ninth after a flat.

“Day 3 of the Morocco rally was a bit of a comeback day for us after yesterday’s disappointment and starting quite far back on the road today,” said Lategan. He was forced out of Stage 2 with a broken rear diff. “We were able to push and we decided to just go for it. We’ve had a really nice run today.

“When we got to the dunes, we had a little bit of difficulty as we were far back from the road so we had really soft sand to contend with which made it difficult to cross and the car was overheating a bit so we did lose a bit of power. After the dunes, we could start to attack. We had a great rhythm going over the faster rougher stuff and from looking at the splits we could see we were making up ground, we carried on pushing despite getting lost for just a moment.

“Overall, a good day. Stage win feels really nice. It just would have been perfect if we were still in the running but it’s all good.”

The bikes also had a single manufacturer place top two as Tosha Schareina once again finished ahead of Ricky Brabec. Schareina is slowly but surely narrowing the gap on Daniel Sanders in the overall, reducing it from 43 seconds to 38. A similar pursuit is ongoing in Rally2, where Michael Docherty erased his five-minute deficit to Edgar Canet and now trails by just 40 seconds.

Ross Branch was also a Stage 3 victim of sort as he ran out of gas just 20 kilometers before the refuel point due to a fuel leak. David Pabiška stopped to help him get there.

“Massive respect to him, and I encourage everyone to go out and support him,” Branch said of Pabiška. Branch finished ninth and last in RallyGP, over two hours behind the leaders, while Pabiška was 32nd after getting three minutes and 58 seconds removed from his time for the assist. “Unfortunately, these things happen in rallying, but we are still in the race and ready to give it our all tomorrow.”

Stage 3 winners

FIA

Class	Overall	Number	Driver	Team	Total Time
Ultimate	1	204	Henk Lategan	Toyota Gazoo Racing	3:29:48
Challenger	20	304	Dania Akeel	BBR Motorsport	3:54:50
SSV	23	401	Francisco López Contardo*	Can-Am Factory Team	3:57:38
Truck	41	600	Martin Macík Jr.*	MM Technology	4:15:10
Experimental Stock	57	501	Akira Miura*	Team Land Cruiser Toyota Auto Body	4:58:15

FIM

Class	Overall	Number	Rider	Team	Total Time
RallyGP	1	68	Tosha Schareina	Monster Energy Honda HRC	3:37:48
Rally2	5	22	Michael Docherty	BAS World KTM Racing Team	3:45:40
Rally3	28	184	Noa Sainct	Nomade Racing	4:30:02

Open

Class	Overall	Number	Driver	Team	Total Time
Open Car	1	701	Martin Koloc*	Buggyra ZM Racing	4:59:48
Open SSV	2	721	Marian Andreev*	M&M Kamikaze Team	7:12:43
Open Truck	DNF	N/A	No Finishers	N/A	DNF

Leaders after Stage 3

FIA

Class	Overall	Number	Driver	Team	Total Time
Ultimate	1	219	Sébastien Loeb	Dacia Sandriders	9:46:02
Challenger	21	303	Pau Navarro	BBR Motorsports	11:06:37
SSV	23	411	Jeremías González Ferioli*	Can-Am Factory Team	11:10:28
Truck	32	600	Martin Macík Jr.*	MM Technology	11:57:10
Experimental Stock	46	501	Akira Miura*	Team Land Cruiser Toyota Auto Body	13:29:57

FIM

Class	Overall	Number	Rider	Team	Total Time
RallyGP	1	4	Daniel Sanders	Red Bull KTM Factory Racing	10:27:34
Rally2	5	73	Edgar Canet	Red Bull KTM Factory Racing	10:51:19
Rally3	41	183	Thomas Zoldos	Aub’Moto	13:47:34

Open

Class	Overall	Number	Driver	Team	Total Time
Open Car	3	701	Martin Koloc*	Buggyra ZM Racing	31:07:18
Open SSV	1	722	Ali Oubassidi*	Africa Rallye Team	21:55:35
Open Truck	6	751	Jürgen Hellgeth*	Hellgeth Engineering	50:31:50

Featured image credit: Kin Marcin / Red Bull Content Pool