While he still has one more race next week, March 2026 will be a month that Ciaran Naran remembers for a lifetime. It began with Naran and Lyndon Snodgrass winning the Mint 400 Motorcycle Race, scoring the first desert overall win for Ducati since 1969.

Two weeks later, Naran was the top rider in the Sonora Rally. He battled with Mike Johnson until the latter struggled with dune navigation on the penultimate stage and received a 15-minute penalty, dropping him behind Naran and Kyle McCoy. Johnson salvaged a stage win on the final day, though he couldn’t pass McCoy for second.

Naran and Johnson each tied with two stage wins. The former wasn’t perfect by any means either as he fell behind due to speeding penalties in Stage 2, but his mistakes were minimal by comparison. As a result, Naran was the only rider to set a final time below 19 hours and by a very comfortable margin.

While his résumé is mainly filled with desert racing achievements that include the 2024 SCORE Pro Moto Unlimited title and aforementioned Mint, he has proven to be a capable rally raider too. He has been sporadically doing cross-country rallies since 2024 before scoring his first win in the discipline at last October’s Baja Rally.

Rather than the Desmo450 he uses in desert competition, Naran competes in rallies like Sonora on a Husqvarna FR 450 that Dakar Rally alumnus Lyndon Poskitt built him. W2RC regular Skyler Howes was also involved with training him for Sonora.

“First time at Sonora Rally and man, hell of a time. Unreal riding, unreal race, and unforgettable memories,” Naran said at the prize ceremony. Like Preston Campbell in 2025, he hopes to use the overall win to bolster his chances of being accepted for the 2027 Dakar; coincidentally, Campbell also won the Mint’s Motorcycle Race last year shortly before his Sonora victory.

“This is probably my fourth rally total,” he continued. “I haven’t done a lot of roadbooks, so I was pretty nervous coming into it. I know the old boy Mike Johnson is a smart man behind the roadbooks, and I was worried, not going to lie. He gave me a run for my money. Super excited to be taking this win.”

Although celebratory this weekend, Naran’s March isn’t over yet. Next Saturday, he will rejoin Snodgrass and HERO Racing for the SCORE season-opening San Felipe 250; HERO, as a Honda team, finished runner-up for bikes in the 2025 edition.

Matt Lube, a newcomer to rally, finished fourth to win the Enduro class. He credited Off Piste Adventure for helping him prep for the race as well as the Sonora Rally’s own dune navigation school in February.

“This is my first rally. I didn’t know what a roadbook was 90 days ago,” Lube quipped.

Like Naran, Ryan Nariño and Jorge Cano effectively earned their tickets to the 2027 Dakar by respectively winning the Dakar Dreams and Road to Dakar.

The Dakar Dreams is a Sonora-only feature in which the organizers cover $10,000 of the winner’s Dakar entry fees. Nariño, who struggled in 2025 and finished second-to-last, rebounded strong by never finishing worse than seventh overall across the five days. Armando Alonso Morales was second and three hours back. Stage 3 overall bike winner Adolfo Alonso initially looked to be Nariño’s main rival until he had a rough Stage 4 and over three hours of penalties.

“I’ve been working on going to Dakar for a while now and this is definitely a lot of assistance to go,” an emotional Nariño stated. “It’s a lot of good help. Really excited and happy. I’m not sad, but I’m not crying because I’m sad. It’s because I’m happy.”

Should he be accepted for the 2027 Dakar (a spot on the grid isn’t guaranteed, but finishing Sonora earns him six points that increase the likelihood of him getting one), Nariño will follow in his father Antonio’s footsteps. The older Nariño ran the 2015 race and currently oversees All American Rally Raid.

Cano and navigator Abelardo Ruanova were the only crew entered in the Road to Dakar, meaning they simply needed to complete the race to win. The SCORE regular, who placed third in Pro UTV Forced Induction at last year’s San Felipe 250 and Baja 500, was one of just three Auto teams to finish the rally. Cano and Ruanova even earned some kudos and time credits when they stopped to help C.J. King after he crashed.

“Thank you guys for helping me out. I would not have made it out of the desert without you,” King said about Cano and Ruanova.

Cano will also be in San Felipe a week from now. He was sandwiched between overall winner Mike Shirley and Daniel González among the trio of four-wheel finishers.

“Eric (Pucelik) and I have known each other since seventh grade,” Shirley commented on his friendship with his co-driver. “To still be out here ripping, all the way from seventh grade and having a blast and bringing it home, this makes a nice drive home.”

Stage winners

Stage	Auto	Time	Moto	Time
Stage 1	Mike Shirley	3:34:19	Ciaran Naran	3:27:10
Stage 2	Jorge Cano	3:32:08	Mike Johnson	3:38:03
Stage 3	Mike Shirley	4:44:34	Adolfo Alonso	4:42:59
Stage 4	Mike Shirley	4:45:57	Ciaran Naran	3:41:46
Stage 5	Mike Shirley	2:54:08	Mike Johnson	2:32:20

Results

Auto

Finish	Class	Number	Driver	Navigator	Category	Total Time
1	1	206	Mike Shirley	Eric Pucelik	UTV Unlimited	20:03:53
2	1	202	Jorge Cano	Abelardo Ruanova	UTV Stock	20:51:29
3	2	204	Daniel González	Jorge Hernandez	UTV Stock	22:27:39
DNF	DNF	201	Gary Payne	Phil Ashworth	UTV Stock	DNF
DNF	DNF	203	Steven Brink	Kevin Omo	UTV Stock	DNF
DNF	DNF	205	Kirk Kontilis	Lance Webb	UTV Modified	DNF
DNF	DNF	207	George La Monte	Tony Albano	2WD	DNF
DNF	DNF	208	Larry Trim	Mickey Pertol	4WD	DNF

Moto

Finish	Class	Number	Driver	Class	Total Time
1	1	21	Ciaran Naran	Pro Moto	18:25:12
2	2	1	Kyle McCoy	Pro Moto	19:06:21
3	3	8	Mike Johnson	Pro Moto	19:11:41
4	1	14	Matt Lube	Rally Enduro	20:30:22
5	4	5	Ryan Nariño	Pro Moto	20:48:31
6	2	10	Josiah Skagen	Rally Enduro	22:55:04
7	5	6	Armando Alonso Morales	Pro Moto	23:01:50
8	3	24	Micah Smith	Rally Enduro	23:20:15
9	4	16	Alexis Raoux	Rally Enduro	24:10:10
10	6	2	Adolfo Alonso	Pro Moto	24:56:19
11	5	18	Scott Thornton	Rally Enduro	26:22:21
12	6	22	Michael Burns	Rally Enduro	26:46:18
13	7	25	Matt Witchgers	Rally Enduro	27:00:50
14	8	15	Timur Urakov	Rally Enduro	28:03:04
15	7	23	Christophe Suberville	Pro Moto	29:42:03
16	9	3	Olof Sundström	Rally Enduro	30:07:59
17	10	13	Paul Mumford	Rally Enduro	32:13:25
18	11	20	Jaime Montes Autrique	Rally Enduro	46:10:45
19	12	19	Chris Baker	Rally Enduro	49:09:05
20	13	27	Miguel Donovan	Rally Enduro	51:09:40
21	14	9	Tim Donaworth	Rally Enduro	51:47:23
22	15	11	Tim Goss	Rally Enduro	65:37:42
DNF	DNF	7	Hector Guerrero Hernandez	Pro Moto	DNF
DNF	DNF	12	Alan Mason	Rally Enduro	DNF
DNF	DNF	17	Chris John King	Rally Enduro	DNF
DNF	DNF	26	Ryan Parlin	Rally Enduro	DNF
DNF	DNF	31	Ladislao Hernandez Aresti	Pro Moto	DNF

Featured image credit: Sonora Rally