♪ Shining Shiner Shiniest Girls be ambitious & shine ♪

A day after the Benavides became the first brothers to win the same Dakar Rally stage in different classes, Puck Klaassen and Dania Akeel made history for the sisters (of the non-familial variety).

Klaassen beat Akeel by just three seconds for the Challenger Stage 8 win on Monday. It is the first time in any W2RC race, let alone Dakar, that women finished 1–2 in a leg. The two previously contributed to the first female multi-win effort at the Rallye du Maroc in October.

Paul Spierings led the class early on while Klaassen and Akeel chased him down. Klaassen took the lead halfway, though Akeel couldn’t quite set a faster time than Spierings until the 100-to-go mark. Even then, she was still well within striking distance of Klaassen as they were three seconds apart at KM 382.

“I drove my drive and I did a good job,” said Akeel. “There are so many good drivers in good cars in our category this year. Maybe today with the strong winds and the fast pace, the advantage was not with our car.”

Spierings and David Zille were still within a minute of the leaders, the former just 21 second behind Klaassen and the latter 28 before receiving 30 seconds of speeding penalties.

Although not the marathon that the Classics had to go through on Friday, Stage 8 was the longest for the Dakar Rally with 483 kilometers in timed sections. Even then, nearly every class had the stage win come down to a couple minutes at most: Neels Theric held off Martim Ventura by 15 seconds to win Rally2, Brock Heger beat Jeremías González Ferioli in SSV by 46, and Rokas Baciuška topped Stock by 1:44 over Sara Price. Luciano Benavides and Daniel Sanders, aided by time bonuses as the first starters, passed Ricky Brabec late and were 4:50 apart from each other. Mitchel van den Brink beat Vaidotas Žala by 5:31 in Truck.

Ultimate was an especially tight battle as the top four were separated by a mere 37 seconds, and even fifth-placed Nasser Al-Attiyah was just 1:16 back of the battle. Saood Variawa traded blows with Toyota ally Henk Lategan in a duel of the South Africans that came down to just three seconds between them. Mattias Ekström, who led the first half as the opener, was third and 0:29 back followed by Seth Quintero eight seconds after him.

“We struggled with one of the waypoints early in the stage, like a lot of others, then we had a puncture soon after 100 kilos,” said Lategan. “From there, we tried to manage our pace. It was difficult to gain time because the stage was high speed with a lot of straight-line driving. We decided to stop before the end of the stage and give away some time, so we are not opening tomorrow’s stage.

“Unfortunately, we didn’t concede enough time, and we were still second. We really wanted to be further back. We now have a big job to open the stage tomorrow, but we will push to not give away too much time.”

Another TGR driver in Toby Price had a tough day after hitting a rock and getting a flat from that. He finished 13th as a result.

“The car looks a bit battered and bruised. Sometimes you just can’t avoid it when you’re driving through vegetation, but it’s fine underneath,” he commented.

The Truck category wasn’t as close, but they had bigger things to worry about after a strange day plagued by incidents.

The most notable involved Martin Macík Jr. and Aleš Loprais, who entered Monday ranked second and fourth overall for their class. Loprais was trapped on the crest of a dune, and Macík couldn’t see his truck in time as he went over and landed on him. Macík took damage to his nose while the back bodywork on Loprais’ IVECO was shredded. Both drivers and their crews were unharmed.

“It was an extremely demanding day and in the final stretch we were just surviving”, Loprais said. “I’m glad nobody got hurt. I’m still positive, because you never know what can happen.”

Martin van den Brink and Mark Mustermann were involved in a very bizarre accident that began when the latter’s Hilux got stuck while trying to climb a dune. He reversed to give himself a better launch point, but van den Brink’s IVECO was coming over the dune behind Mustermann at the same time and hit him in the right rear. The bump smashed van den Brink’s windshield and damaged Mustermann’s quarter panel. The Coronels couldn’t see the beached vehicles with how low the drop was but managed to brake before impact.

“That was a bit of a shock, but fortunately it wasn’t too bad,” said van den Brink. “We couldn’t do anything about it and neither could the driver in the Toyota.”

Tom Coronel recalled that he and his brother “were heading toward their rear and ended up getting stuck ourselves. There was nowhere to go, we were on the dune. I jumped out quickly to call for help, and then we managed to get moving again. Just in time.”

After detaching themselves from the mess, more trouble arose when the ropes on the sand plates wrapped around the driveshaft and tore it apart, costing the brothers an hour as they got it replaced. They later encountered a trapped Mustermann again, only to damage their clutch as they pulled him out.

Gonçalo Guerreiro broke three bones in his left hand when he crashed into another car while airborne, ending his race. His teammate Xavier de Soultrait rolled after colliding with Bruno Saby, damaging the latter’s left rear; Alexandre Pesci stopped to help Soultrait back on his wheels. Pablo Copetti had his own rollover that destroyed the fuel pump connector, knocking him out of the race since he couldn’t fix it in the dunes. Hassan Jameel also went over, leaving him stuck until South Racing’s fast assistance truck Tomáš Tomeček could arrive to help.

Eryk Goczał had a messy day when the differential broke 200 kilometers into the stage. He tried to keep the unit together with radiator sealant to little success, then tried every lubricant he could find. It was far from pretty and his gloves were stained, but he got it working just enough to continue.

Stage 8 was the first for the Dakar Classic to use a mass start, which will also be done by the Rally itself on the final day. Ondřej Klymčiw scored the stage win in his “Jurassic Dakar” Pajero ahead of Juan Morera, who had a scare when one of his front tires got warped but managed to replace it before it blew. Gabriel Valentin’s 1988 Range Rover, a few days removed from rescuing a TV truck that had gotten stuck, ended up a victim itself of a blown head gasket.

Tomasz Białkowski and the DAF Bull had an unusually off day as he placed seventh in H1T and 50th overall for the day, which he attributed to taking the wrong road and getting penalized as a result. He fell from eighth to 11th in the overall as a result. Andrea Cadei topped H1T in his Fiat 80-16.

“We had a great time overtaking a truck and chasing it. Unfortunately, the Dakar then taught us you shouldn’t do that because we went the wrong way,” Białkowski quipped.

Stage 8 winners

FIA

Class	Overall	Number	Driver	Team	Total Time
Ultimate	1	213	Saood Variawa	Toyota Gazoo Racing South Africa	4:20:35
Challenger	33	302	Puck Klaassen	KTM X-Bow powered by G Rally Team	4:55:38
SSV	49	401	Brock Heger*	LOEB FrayMédia Motorsport	5:05:01
Stock	55	502	Rokas Baciuška	Defender Rally	5:06:26
Truck	46	601	Mitchel van den Brink*	Eurol Rally Sport	5:03:42

FIM

Class	Overall	Number	Rider	Team	Total Time
RallyGP	1	77	Luciano Benavides	Red Bull KTM Factory Racing	4:26:39
Rally2	9	66	Neels Theric	Kove Factory Racing	4:45:44

Other

Class	Number	Competitor	Team	Points
Classic	710	Ondřej Klymčiw*	Klymčiw Racing	22
Mission 1000	1040	Jordi Juvanteny*	KH-7 Ecovergy Team	30

Leaders after Stage 8

FIA

Class	Overall	Number	Driver	Team	Total Time
Ultimate	1	299	Nasser Al-Attiyah	Dacia Sandriders	32:32:06
Challenger	27	336	Pau Navarro	Odyssey Academy by BBR	36:18:05
SSV	31	401	Brock Heger*	LOEB FrayMédia Motorsport	36:46:28
Stock	48	502	Rokas Baciuška	Defender Rally	38:40:14
Truck	39	601	Mitchel van den Brink*	Eurol Rally Sport	37:48:31

FIM

Class	Overall	Number	Rider	Team	Total Time
RallyGP	1	77	Luciano Benavides	Red Bull KTM Factory Racing	33:18:50
Rally2	9	85	Preston Campbell	Monster Energy Honda HRC Rally2	35:20:18

Other

Class	Number	Competitor	Team	Points
Classic	703	Karolis Raišys*	Ovoko Racing	487
Mission 1000	1040	Jordi Juvanteny*	KH-7 Ecovergy Team	152

Featured image credit: Antonin Vincent / DPPI / ASO