Wednesday is the last day of the month, and with it often came the joke to wake Billie Joe Armstrong up because September has ended. Given the serious context behind “Wake Me Up When September Ends”, however, the meme is considered insensitive by Green Day fan. Armstrong himself has occasionally leaned into the joke, though we’re still waiting for the release of “Shut the Fuck Up When October Comes”.

Dacia would certainly like for October to come with how much of a disaster September concluded.

The team entered the Rallye du Maroc with two drivers atop the World Rally-Raid Championship. Both are now in murky territory as points leader Sébastien Loeb retired from Stage 1 due to an electrical failure, then Nasser Al-Attiyah had a gearbox issue while leading Stage 2 that caused his Sandrider to stop.

Al-Attiyah was the fastest car for much of Wednesday, holding a minute lead over Henk Lategan through KM 221 that crew to 1:32 by the final checkpoint at KM 276. During the final 24 kilometers, however, his gearbox started to make a strange sound before the car shut down altogether. Loeb caught up to him and towed him to the finish, 45:36 back of Lategan.

His teammates’ problems meant Lucas Moraes was now tasked with stopping the bleeding. He finished the stage fourth to take the overall lead, though Lategan is just 28 seconds behind.

“The goal this morning was not to get out of the car and we managed that,” said Lategan.

The same couldn’t be said for others. Lategan’s Hilux colleagues Yazeed Al-Rajhi and Guy Botterill were among the DNFs for a mechanical failure and crash, respectively.

Loeb and Al-Attiyah weren’t the only title contenders to encounter trouble so soon. Stock points leader Rokas Baciuška had a hard impact while driving through a riverbed roughly 40 to 50 kilometers from the finish, breaking the right-rear wishbone. Without the parts in the field to get it fixed, he had to wait for a service truck to pick him up.

Baciuška consequently finished last in class and three hours and 43 minutes behind third-placed Yasir Seaidan. Sara Price now has five hours on Baciuška in the overall; Price seemed to be the only one of the Defender trio to avoid trouble on Wednesday, as Stéphane Peterhansel got stuck himself in a rut for ten minutes.

Kevin Benavides and Lex Peters both rolled their cars in the whoops. The former had been running top five overall until his accident at KM 197. Kay Huzink was taken out by a broken rear axle at KM 270 after struggling with suspension and shock absorber problems during the first two stages.

“We started the stage carefully because we reverted to the setup we used for the MDC (Morocco Desert Challenge),” Huzink explained.

His truck, a new IVECO from de Rooy, then suffered a flat 20 km in before being used to help a rolled-over car 70 kilometers later. At the neutralization, he noticed the mounting on the rear bodywork had snapped and eased up on the gas before reaching the service area. Eventually, a hard hit at the 270-km mark shredded the mounting. Team de Rooy didn’t have the right components needed for repairs, ending the maiden race for the new-look Huzink Rally Sport.

The bikes had their share of problems too. The tablet on Dakar Rally2 winner Toni Mulec’s bike suddenly switched off 240 kilometers in, and he crashed after hitting something in the ground while trying to reset it; the problem persisted the rest of the day and was exacerbated by the dust.

“It’s not the Rallye du Maroc we expected or wanted,” Tosha Schareina said after a dismal stage plagued by bike problems. The defending overall winner fnished seventh in RallyGP. “We came here fighting for the championship, but this is part of the game.”

Some didn’t take the start. Noa Sainct sat out the stage due to pain in his hand, while Philip McVay spent Wednesday rebuilding his Taurus after flipping twice in Stage 1.

Ben Howard was taken to the hospital after crashing. Joking he was “looking fashionable in my MIRA riding gear tied to my hospital gurney like it’s Jurassic Park” (a reference to Alan tying his seatbelt on the helicopter flight to the eponymous park in the original 1993 film), he was eventually cleared of spinal injuries and given anti-inflammatory medication.

Eugenio Amos received a fine for going 129 km/h on a road section. Vic Flip got two points added to her license for hitting 122.

Ali Oubassidi, winner of the 2024 and 2025 Rallye du Maroc’s Open SSV class, swapped his Can-Am Maverick X3 for a Toyota Land Cruiser HZJ78 and won the stage in Classic. His 35 points easily cleared Stage 1 winner Taz Harvey’s 91.

The Porsche 964 of Axel Berrier got stuck on a dune until Serge Mogno came by to pull him to safety. Even with the snag, Berrier finished fourth overall among the Classics and third in H2. Mogno, meanwhile, was just happy to be there after clearing up the situation with navigator Anis Meftah’s license. Also in the Nantes Prestige Autos camp, Pierre-Louis Berrier initially got a penalty for being late to the start but was canceled since the stewards had failed to note down his presence at the time control for Dune Test 2-2.

DT 2-2, the only dune test of the stage, was plagued by several cars being trapped. Luis Robles arrived over an hour late to the end of Navigation Test 2-3 because of his time in the dunes, causing him to be written down as a DNF. Robles and fellow driver Frédéric Fatien both argued their tardiness were because they were helping stuck vehicles in DT 2-2: Robles used his Mercedes-Benz G-Class to rescue Fernando Blanco, Ludovic Bois, Helen Tait-Wright (who rolled on one of said dunes; she and Marcella Kirk escaped unharmed, though their Land Rover’s engine became hydrolocked), and Javier Vélez, while Fatien and his HZJ78 claimed responsibility for helping Bois and Stéphane Jaillant.

While the stewards deducted 20 minutes from Fatien’s time, Robles didn’t get the same benefit because he never pressed the green button on the Iritrack device to register when his car was stopped to help. Still, his argument was convinced them to let him rejoin the Classic for Stage 3.

Claude Fournier was the first retirement of the RdM Classic for medical reasons.

Stage winners

FIA

Class	Overall	Number	Driver	Team	Total Time
Ultimate	1	202	Henk Lategan	Toyota Gazoo Racing	3:28:34
Challenger	23	304	Paul Spierings	Rebellion Spierings	3:50:24
SSV	24	401	Jeremías González Ferioli	Can-Am Factory Team	3:54:25
Stock	48	500	Stéphane Peterhansel	Defender Rally	4:16:51
Truck	33	603	Mitchel van den Brink	Eurol Rally Sport Team de Rooy	4:02:46

FIM

Class	Overall	Number	Rider	Team	Total Time
RallyGP	1	1	Daniel Sanders	Red Bull KTM Factory Racing	3:35:14
Rally2	4	84	Martim Ventura	Monster Energy Honda HRC	3:39:06
Rally3	36	175	Albert Martín	Triumph Spain	4:45:01
Quad	48	180	Antanas Kanopkinas	CFMOTO Thunder Racing Team	4:57:17

Open

Class	Overall	Number	Driver	Team	Total Time
Auto	1	701	Christian Lavieille	Team Land Cruiser Toyota Auto Body	4:52:40
SSV	2	722	Ján Hnidka	JSK Racing	5:18:10

Classic

Class	Overall	Number	Driver	Team	Points
H2	1	832	Ali Oubassidi	Compagnie Saharienne	35
H3	5	802	Josef Unterholzner	R Team	203
H4	3	805	Davide Facchini	R Team	120

Overall leaders

FIA

Class	Overall	Number	Driver	Team	Total Time
Ultimate	1	223	Lucas Moraes	Dacia Sandriders	6:11:41
Challenger	21	301	Alexandre Pinto	Odyssey Academy by BBR	6:50:47
SSV	26	412	Matthias Walkner	South Racing	6:58:55
Stock	48	504	Sara Price	Defender Rally	7:50:40
Truck	32	603	Mitchel van den Brink	Eurol Rally Sport Team de Rooy	7:10:16

FIM

Class	Overall	Number	Rider	Team	Total Time
RallyGP	1	1	Daniel Sanders	Red Bull KTM Factory Racing	6:26:32
Rally2	4	84	Martim Ventura	Monster Energy Honda HRC	6:32:42
Rally3	35	175	Albert Martín	Triumph Spain	8:19:34
Quad	50	180	Antanas Kanopkinas	CFMOTO Thunder Racing Team	9:02:02

Open

Class	Overall	Number	Driver	Team	Total Time
Auto	1	701	Christian Lavieille	Team Land Cruiser Toyota Auto Body	8:39:59
SSV	2	721	Brahim Ettaiek	BE Racing	13:33:39

Classic

Class	Overall	Number	Driver	Team	Points
H2	1	832	Ali Oubassidi	Compagnie Saharienne	68
H3	4	802	Josef Unterholzner	R Team	223
H4	5	805	Davide Facchini	R Team	249

Featured image credit: Frédéric Le Floc’h / DPPI / ASO