For the first time ever, Nasser Al-Attiyah did not win the World Rally-Raid Championship. While that was a change, what wasn’t new was a Toyota Hilux at the top.

Lucas Moraes entered the season-ending Rallye du Maroc with a ten-point deficit on Al-Attiyah, but also momentum on his side after scoring his maiden W2RC win at the Rally Raid Portugal two weeks prior. His TGR teammate Henk Lategan sat between them, nine points back of Al-Attiyah.

Al-Attiyah, who had won every drivers’ title since the series’ inception in 2022 as well as the 2024 Rallye du Maroc in Dacia’s debut, struck first by winning the Prologue. While Prologue times don’t count towards the FIA overall, it was still a good way to set the tone. Unfortunately for Al-Attiyah, his Sandrider failed to hold that high note as he hit a ditch in Stage 1 steering arm. Moraes finished third to take the early advantage and leave Al-Attiyah having to claw back through the order.

While Al-Attiyah won Stage 2, he was never able to catch Moraes in the overall. Even then, all the Qatari really needed was to get close enough to Moraes to mitigate the points blow and hold onto his title. Entering the final day, Al-Attiyah led Moraes by just two points.

Moraes had an unimpressive Stage 5, but Al-Attiyah’s defense was ultimately killed when he received a one-hour penalty for not stopping at the end of the Power Stage’s timed section. The error came when Al-Attiyah and his navigator Fabian Lurquin were bickering over the end of the section, during which neither noticed the point in front of the media area where they needed to come to a stop. Al-Attiyah blasted by at over 165 km/h before finally coming to a halt 649 meters after the finish.

The team blamed dust for causing them to miss the stop sign, but video review by the FIA found the dust had actually been from behind their car. Additionally, the stewards poitned out Al-Attiyah had continued driving well after passing the sign and should have noticed that the course had already ended.

“[E]ven if the crew’s claims were valid (as already mentioned, this was not confirmed in this case), and there was a significant amount of dust, the crew members, being professional athletes, should have understood how to behave in such situations,” reads the stewards’ report. “Dust is a common factor in this motorsport discipline, but that does not mean that it gives the crew any right to behave unsafely and unreasonably.”

Al-Attiyah was eventually fined €10,000, half of which is suspended until the end of the 2026 W2RC season assuming no repeat infractions. The penalty dropped him to 15th overall for the race.

While a disappointing end for Al-Attiyah, Sébastien Loeb still won the race for Dacia by 5:43 over Moraes. It was a massive breath of fresh air for Loeb, who had not won a rally raid since the 2022 season-ending Andalucía Rally. His new co-driver Édouard Boulanger, ironically Al-Attiyah’s for much of the season, also clinched the navigators’ title for the second year in a row.

“We had a good rhythm since the beginning of the rally, no mistakes, no problems,” said Loeb. “We worked together with Édouard, finding our collaboration and improving it because we did just one rally together before this. Honestly, the feeling was really good with the Dacia Sandrider with the stages and we could push from the start to the end.

“It was the perfect rally for us. Édouard is the world champion navigator. He started the season with Nasser and finished it with me and finishes the season with me most points so it’s good. I’m happy for him, he deserved it and did a great job here. This rally is good preparation for the Dakar also, we were here also for that, to prepare for Dakar. At the moment, everything is going very well. It’s only my second cross-country rally win and I’m really happy.”

Al-Attiyah’s debacle and Moraes’ runner-up propelled the latter past for the championship by 11 points. Lategan settled for third, knocked out of title contention by a rear differential failure in Stage 2.

Moraes and Lategan’s contributions also helped Toyota secure the manufacturers’ title, which the Japanese company has won every year of the W2RC’s existence.

“Crazy, crazy finish to this rally but I just want to thank the whole team,” Moraes stated. “It has been a dream to be a part of this team and to win the manufacturers and also the drivers’ championship is something amazing. All the mechanics and engineers, they work so hard and really happy to finish the season like this even though it went down to the wire. This goes to Brazil and to Toyota.”

The last stage claimed a handful of victims. Isidre Esteve, who was using the race to prep for Dakar, changed the differential throughout the race and the final setup proved to be a mess, costing him time that was further piled on by a penalty for missing a waypoint. Still, he managed a 19th.

Perennial frontrunners Yazeed Al-Rajhi and Carlos Sainz were respectively taken out by mechanical failures. Daniel Schröder retired after a massive crash that destroyed much of his Volkswagen’s bodywork, while former IndyCar driver Francesco Dracone’s rally raid debut was cut short when his navigator Alessandro Verna had a medical emergency.

Nathan Hayashi, an unusual face as an ULTS entry, started the race in Ultimate but back-to-back stage DNFs prevented him from continuing in the class. He switched to Open for the last two stages.

The rally was especially challenging for Century Racing, who was hoping to test new parts like shocks and suspension. While a few retirements were perhaps unsurprising with 11 cars entered, virtually all of them struggled with a myriad of problems ranging from mechanical to accidents.

The team’s factory drivers Mathieu Serradori and Brian Baragwanath entered Morocco with high hopes, the former in an upgraded chassis while the latter drove his teammate’s old car. However, while the reliability of the cars improved, the desert and high speeds took heavy tolls on the R53 shocks and suspension early on. Baragwanath also had to deal with his GPS signal, which controls the car’s speed, glitching out on the first stage.

“Our dampers contain around 240 individual parts with three stages in compression, so it’s a very complex three dimensional problem,” explained team manager Julien Hardy. “A lot of variable like terrain, fuel load, temperature add to the complexity, not to mention that the front and the rear have to be considered sometimes separately and sometimes together. Many clues from the instrumentation we have on the car and from the bench testing, but it’s not always easy to find our way around.

“Introducing upgrades during the race is a balancing act. It can backfire if we get it wrong as we cannot really test them until the next day. Morocco as always is the final big test before Dakar so we’re trying to keep that goal in mind, treat it more as a development race.”

Although R53 and Century managed to figure out the right suspension, attrition from crashes and other misfortunes still lurked. Serradori suffered a broken rear CV joint that knocked him out of Stage 5, with Baragwanath stopping to help.

Other Century clients had a rough going too. Janus van Kasteren was taken out of ontention by a rut that destroyed the left front of his CR7-T while teammate Michiel Becx and ally Jérémie Renou suffered rollovers. Rik van den Brink hit a ditch that resulted in a compression fracture.

Despite the tribulations, Baragwanath ended up being the highest-finishing Century in 14th while Benoît Fretin won the race in T1.2. Dutch collective Shiver Offroad also managed to get all three cars, including van Kasteren and Becx, to the finish.

Laia Sanz finished 18th in class and rounded out the top 20 overall in the debut race for the EBRO s800 XRR, which is based on Century’s CR7 so they lent technical assistance to EBRO Audax Motorsport. She ran in the top 15 until she lost power steering in Stage 5 and the Power Stage.

“We’ve turned around the suspension setup and all drivers were very happy with it today,” Hardy commented at the end of the last day. “Of course we have a list of items to improve as always, nothing new after any big race like this week. The cars were relatively trouble free up until today, so in a way better to see those issues now than in Saudi.”

Results

Finish	Overall	Number	Driver	Navigator	Team	Class	Total Time	Margin
1	1	219	Sébastien Loeb	Édouard Boulanger	Dacia Sandriders	T1+	15:11:40	Leader
2	2	202	Lucas Moraes	Armand Monleón	Toyota Gazoo Racing	T1+	15:17:23	+ 5:43
3	3	227	Nani Roma	Alex Haro	Ford M-Sport	T1+	15:17:55	+ 6;15
4	4	240	João Ferreira	Filipe Palmeiro	Toyota Gazoo Racing South Africa	T1+	15:17:59	+ 6:19
5	5	226	Mattias Ekström	Emil Bergkvist	Ford M-Sport	T1+	15:19:09	+ 7:29
6	6	206	Saood Variawa	François Cazalet	Toyota Gazoo Racing South Africa	T1+	15:38:23	+ 26:43
7	7	228	Mitch Guthrie	Kellon Walch	Ford M-Sport	T1+	15:39:00	+ 27:20
8	8	210	Eryk Goczał	Szymon Gospodarczyk	Energylandia Rally Team	T1+	15:39:13	+ 27:33
9	9	212	Cristina Gutiérrez	Pablo Moreno	Dacia Sandriders	T1+	15:56:26	+ 44:46
10	10	211	Marek Goczał	Maciej Marton	Energylandia Rally Team	T1+	16:03:09	+ 51:29
11	11	221	Martin Prokop	Viktor Chytka	ORLEN Jipocar Team	T1+	16:10:46	+ 59:06
12	12	203	Juan Cruz Yacopini	Daniel Oliveras	SVR	T1+	16:13:12	+ 1:01:32
13	13	204	Henk Lategan	Brett Cummings	Toyota Gazoo Racing	T1+	16:19:01	+ 1:07:21
14	14	223	Brian Baragwanath*	Leonard Cremer	Century Racing	T1+	16;23:55	+ 1:12:15
15	15	200	Nasser Al-Attiyah	Fabian Lurquin	Dacia Sandriders	T1+	16:24:36	+ 1:12:56
16	16	218	Michał Goczał	Diego Ortega	Energylandia Rally Team	T1+	16:33:21	+ 1:21:41
17	17	224	Lionel Baud	Lucie Baud	X-raid Mini JCW Team	T1+	16:51:30	+ 1:39:50
18	20	239	Laia Sanz*	Maurizio Gerini	EBRO Audax Motorsport	T1+	17:33:47	+ 2:22:07
19	26	230	Isidre Esteve*	José María Villalobos	Repsol Toyota Rally Team	T1+	18:00:56	+ 2:49:16
20	27	220	Marcos Baumgart*	Kleber Cincea	SVR	T1+	18:13:52	3:02:12
21	33	249	Benoît Fretin*	Cédric Duplé	YDEO Compétition	T1.2	19:23:00	+ 4:11:20
22	34	245	Roger Grouwels*	Rudolf Meijer	Shiver Offroad	T1+	19:24:24	+ 4:12:44
23	35	250	Lucas del Rio*	Bruno Jacomy	MD Rallye Sport	T1.2	19:26:03	+ 4:14:23
24	37	248	Nandu Jubany*	Marc Solà	MD Rallye Sport	T1.2	19:50:04	+ 4:38:24
25	38	233	Hernán Garces*	Juan Pablo Latrach	Overdrive Racing	T1+	20:10:25	+ 4:58:45
26	39	244	Tomasz Baranowski*	Konrad Dudzinski	Promenada Rally Team	T1+	20:17:48	+ 5:06:08
27	41	237	Maik Willems*	Arjan Van Tiel	Bastion Hotels Dakar Team	T1+	20:31;17	+ 5:19:37
28	45	236	Mark Mustermann*	Michael Zajc	MM Rallye	T1+	22:32:04	+ 7:20:24
29	46	235	Jourdan Serderidis*	Frédéric Miclotte	Ford M-Sport	T1+	23:13:52	+ 8:02:12
30	47	207	Jean-Luc Ceccaldi	Guilhem Alves	JLC Racing	T1.2	23:22:11	+ 8:10;31
31	53	208	Mathieu Serradori	Loïc Minaudier	Century Racing	T1+	29:10:36	+ 13:58:56
32	56	205	Seth Quintero	Andrew Short	Toyota Gazoo Racing	T1+	33:00:38	+ 17:48:58
33	59	234	Janus van Kasteren*	Marcel Snijders	Shiver Offroad	T1+	34:33:31	+ 19:21:51
34	61	253	Mike Van Eikeren*	Jasper Riezebos	Bastion Hotels Dakar Team	T1.2	36:02:25	+ 20:50:45
35	64	216	Tomáš Ouředníček*	Rafał Marton	SVR	T1+	36:15:08	+ 21:03:28
36	68	243	Michiel Becx*	Wouter de Graaff	Shiver Offroad	T1+	38:10:10	+ 22:58:30
DNF	DNF	201	Yazeed Al-Rajhi	Timo Gottschalk	Overdrive Racing	T1+	DNF	N/A
DNF	DNF	209	Daniel Schröder	Henry Carl Köhne	PS Laser Racing	T1+	DNF	N/A
DNF	DNF	225	Carlos Sainz	Lucas Cruz	Ford M-Sport	T1+	DNF	N/A
DNF	DNF	241	Rik van den Brink*	Gydo Heimans	Brinky Rallysport	T1+	DNF	N/A
DNF	DNF	242	Francesco Dracone*	Alessandro Verna	Overdrive Racing	T1+	DNF	N/A
DNF	DNF	246	Nathan Hayashi* ^	Shane Hairsine	The Gear Shop Technical Motorsport Team	ULTS	DNF	N/A
DNF	DNF	251	Jérémie Renou*	Antoine Sanchez	YDEO Compétition	T1.2	DNF	N/A
DNF	DNF	252	Frédéric Chesneau*	Lionel Romanin	Skybox	T1.2	DNF	N/A

Stage winners

Stage	Overall	Driver	Time
Prologue	1	Nasser Al-Attiyah	11:56.8
Stage 1	1	Sébastien Loeb	2:49:43
Stage 2	1	Nasser Al-Attiyah	3:19:17
Stage 3	1	Henk Lategan	3:29:48
Stage 4	1	Nani Roma	2:40:15
Stage 5	1	Seth Quintero	2:37:17
Power Stage	1	Nani Roma	16:24

W2RC

Drivers

Rank	Driver	Points	Margin
1	Lucas Moraes	164	Leader
2	Nasser Al-Attiyah	153	– 11
3	Henk Lategan	141	– 23
4	Sébastien Loeb	113	– 51
5	Seth Quintero	97	– 67
6	Yazeed Al-Rajhi	78	– 86
7	João Ferreira	78	– 86
8	Mattias Ekström	70	– 94
9	Nani Roma	62	– 102
T-10	Mitch Guthrie	55	– 109
T-10	Juan Cruz Yacopini	55	– 109
12	Saood Variawa	52	– 112
13	Carlos Sainz	39	– 125
14	Mathieu Serradori	35	– 129
T-15	Guillaume de Mévius	31	– 133
T-15	Martin Prokop	31	– 133
17	Dania Akeel	30	– 134
18	Cristina Gutiérrez	28	– 136
19	Daniel Schröder	23	– 141
20	Pau Navarro	22	– 142
21	Gonçalo Guerreiro	20	– 144
T-22	Nicolás Cavigliasso	19	– 145
T-22	Marek Goczał	19	– 145
T-22	Eryk Goczał	19	– 145
25	Rokas Baciuška	16	– 148
T-26	Guy Botterill	14	– 150
T-26	Adam Kuś	14	– 150
T-26	Alexandre Pinto	14	– 150
T-26	Yasir Seaidan	14	– 150
30	Lionel Baud	13	– 151
31	Enrico Gaspari	12	– 152
32	Denis Krotov	11	– 153
33	Pim Klaassen	10	– 154
T-34	Pedro Gonçalves	9	– 155
T-34	Puck Klaassen	9	– 155
T-36	Khalifa Al-Attiyah	8	– 156
T-36	Michele Cinotto	8	– 156
T-36	Claude Fournier	8	– 156
T-36	Eduard Pons	8	– 156
T-40	Khalid Al-Jafla	7	– 157
T-40	Mário Franco	7	– 157
T-42	Abdulaziz Al-Kuwari	6	– 158
T-42	Manuel Andújar	6	– 158
T-42	Jean-Luc Ceccaldi	6	– 158
T-42	Dave Klaassen	6	– 158
46	David Zille	5	– 159
T-47	Michał Goczał	4	– 160
T-47	Roger Grouwels	4	– 160
T-47	Corbin Leaverton	4	– 160
T-47	Sara Price	4	– 160
T-47	Guoyu Zhang	4	– 160
52	Rui Carneiro	3	– 161
T-53	Mansour Al-Helei	2	– 162
T-53	Fernando Álvarez	2	– 162
T-53	Diego Martinez	2	– 162
T-53	Carlos Vento	2	– 162

Navigators

Rank	Navigator	Points	Margin
1	Édouard Boulanger	187	Leader
2	Armand Monleón	164	– 23
3	Brett Cummings	141	– 46
T-4	Fabian Lurquin	79	– 108
T-4	Dennis Zenz	79	– 108
T-6	Timo Gottschalk	78	– 109
T-6	Filipe Palmeiro	78	– 109
8	Emil Bergkvist	70	– 117
9	Álex Haro	62	– 125
T-10	Daniel Oliveras	55	– 132
T-10	Kellon Walch	55	– 132
12	François Cazalet	52	– 135
13	Lucas Cruz	39	– 148
14	Loïc Minaudier	35	– 152
15	Viktor Chytka	31	– 156
16	Pablo Moreno	28	– 159
17	Oriol Mena	24	– 163
18	Henry Carl Köhne	23	– 164
T-19	Stéphane Duplé	22	– 165
T-19	Bruno Jacomy	22	– 165
T-21	Maciej Marton	19	– 168
T-21	Valentina Pertegarini	19	– 168
23	Andrew Short	18	– 169
24	Xavier Panseri	17	– 170
T-25	Mathieu Baumel	16	– 171
T-25	Jan Rosa I Viñas	16	– 171
27	Carlos Sachs	15	– 172
T-28	Michaël Metge	14	– 173
T-28	Dennis Murphy	14	– 173
T-28	Bernardo Oliveira	14	– 173
T-28	Dmytro Tsyro	14	– 173
32	Lucie Baud	13	– 174
T-33	Szymon Gospodarczyk	11	– 176
T-33	Konstantin Zhiltsov	11	– 176
35	Mark Laan	9	– 178
T-36	Jaume Betriu	8	– 179
T-36	Rui Franco	8	– 179
T-36	Charan Moore	8	– 179
T-36	Fausto Mota	8	– 179
40	Andrei Rudnitski	7	– 180
T-41	Tessa Klaassen	6	– 181
T-41	Lisandro Sisterna	6	– 181
T-43	Sebastián Cesana	5	– 182
T-43	Hugo Magalhães	5	– 182
T-43	Cadu Sachs	5	– 182
T-46	Nasser Al-Kuwari	4	– 183
T-46	Sean Berriman	4	– 183
T-46	Alberto Bertoldi	4	– 183
T-46	Delphine Delfino	4	– 183
T-46	Maurizio Dominella	4	– 183
T-46	Bernardo Graue	4	– 183
T-46	Patrick Jimbert	4	– 183
T-46	Antoine Lecourbe	4	– 183
T-46	Rudolf Meijer	4	– 183
T-46	Diego Ortega	4	– 183
T-46	Taye Perry	4	– 183
T-46	Grégory Revest-Arnoux	4	– 183
T-46	Yicheng Wang	4	– 183
59	João Miranda	3	– 184
T-60	Khalid Al-Kendi	2	– 185
T-60	Guilhem Alves	2	– 185
T-60	Jorge Brandão	2	– 185
T-60	Ola Fløene	2	– 185
T-60	Andres Frini	2	– 185
T-60	Sergio Lafuente	2	– 185
T-60	Augusto Sanz	2	– 185
T-67	Max Delfino	1	– 186
T-67	David Megre	1	– 186

Manufacturers

Rank	Manufacturer	Points	Margin
1	Toyota	467	Leader
2	Dacia	359	– 108
3	Ford	276	– 191

Featured image credit: Julien Delfosse / DPPI / ASO