We joked yesterday about waking Dacia up when September ended. October, as it turned out, already hasn’t been much better.

The good news for the Sandriders is that Sébastien Loeb won Stage 3 of the Rallye du Maroc on Thursday. The bad news is that the team’s last overall contender Lucas Moraes is also now out of the picture after crashing at KM 348.

Moraes noticed an impending danger on the roadbook marked as a level 1 (the lowest and “safest”), and assumed he could go at generally the same pace. As it turned out, he argued, the danger was actually levels 2 or 3 and caused him to flip and land on his side.

He wasn’t the only person with such complaints about the roadbook. Saood Variawa was taken out at KM 150 while going through a section with no danger markings whatsoever. Classic drivers Filippo Colnaghi, Lorenzo Fluxá, and Juan Morera jointly protested to their category’s stewards about an error at KM 217.38, only for them to be rebuked after nothing wrong was found upon review.

Accidents extended to the bikes too. Shlok Ghorpade didn’t notice a dune that was hiding behind two larger dunes because of the sunlight, overshooting it and crashing into another; he chose to retire for the day to fix the navigation system. Edgar Canet crashed early on too, but successfully recovered to finish fourth and remarkably take the overall lead.

Other victims included Laia Sanz to a broken steering pump and Sara Price with a myriad of isuees that caused to finish nearly three hours behind everyone else in Stock. Mattias Ekström, who was fourth overall entering Thursday, missed the start because of a technical issue as did Nicolás Cavigliasso.

Emergency workers were overwhelmed flying downed raiders off the course. Rescues got so bad that the organizers ultimately decided to neutralize the rest of the stage from each racer’s next checkpoint. Loeb was the overall leader for FIA when the leg was frozen, securing the stage win despite no longer being in overall contention because of his Stage 1 retirement.

While a hassle for the organizers trying to get the results sorted out (especially as some like Philip McVay had malfunctioning trackers), the neutralization went fairly smoothly for everyone. Well, everyone except for Luis Robles.

Robles was already reeling after Stage 2 of the Classic when the stewards refused to remove his penalty for arriving late because he was helping cars stuck in the dunes yet forgot to activate his Iritrack’s beacon. On Thursday, he was given the wrong itinerary by race officials to return to the bivouac, resulting in another penalty for deviating from the designated route. This time, the stewards were more forgiving and cleared him of wrongdoing.

In Regularity Test 3-5, Stéphane Jaillant and Nicolo Mussetto both got penalties for being late to their check-in points. Jaillant’s was at the TCv (Virtual Time Control) ahead of the test, while Mussetto stopped in the middle of the section to tow Taz Harvey to the finish. The former got 15 minutes removed from his time, the latter not as fortunate as he received a 30-point penalty.

Luis Antonio Pires was the 17th and final finisher in Classic for the stage with interim navigator in Marcella Kirk. His regular co-driver Marcos Vilariño had to leave after Stage 2 for personal reasons. With Helen Tait-Wright out of the race because her rollover on Tuesday hydrolocked her Land Rover’s engine, Kirk took over the passenger’s seat on Pires’ Land Cruiser. Officially, only Vilariño is classified as a retirement.

On the other hand, Francisco Barreto withdrew from the race altogether because his navigator Paulo Fiúza “was not in the right condition to safely take the start, and his recovery must come before any result.”

Pires’ switch wasn’t the only mid-race change. After retiring in Stage 1 and missing the next day, Challenger drivers Daniel Schröder and Raúl Delgado returned on Thursday as part of the Open class. It is the same process as how Nathan Hayashi switched from Ultimate to Open at the 2025 Rallye du Maroc. Schröder’s Odyssey CR-X finished the stage with the fastest time of the five Open entrants, while Delgado DNF’d.

Stage winners

FIA

Class	Overall	Number	Driver	Team	Time
Ultimate	1	219	Sébastien Loeb	Dacia Sandriders	3:42:34
Challenger	16	301	Alexandre Pinto	Odyssey Academy by BBR	4:09:07
SSV	27	401	Jeremías González Ferioli	Can-Am Factory Team	4:20:53
Stock	23	500	Stéphane Peterhansel	Defender Rally	4:18:15
Truck	17	603	Mitchel van den Brink	Eurol Rally Sport Team de Rooy	4:12:59

FIM

Class	Overall	Number	Rider	Team	Time
RallyGP	1	77	Luciano Benavides	Red Bull KTM Factory Racing	3:55:36
Rally2	4	84	Martim Ventura	Monster Energy Honda HRC	4:00:58
Rally3	40	175	Albert Martín	Triumph Spain	5:19:17
Quad	46	180	Antanas Kanopkinas	CFMOTO Thunder Racing Team	5:35:34

Open

Class	Overall	Number	Driver	Team	Time
Auto	1	723	Daniel Schröder	BBR Motorsport	4:27:18
SSV	2	722	Ján Hnidka	JSK Racing	4:54:57

Classic

Class	Overall	Number	Driver	Team	Points
H2	1	827	Filippo Colnaghi	Tecnosport	27
H3	3	802	Josef Unterholzner	R Team	35
H4	5	805	Davide Facchini	R Team	52

Overall leaders

FIA

Class	Overall	Number	Driver	Team	Time
Ultimate	1	225	Carlos Sainz	Ford Racing	10:04:17
Challenger	15	301	Alexandre Pinto	Odyssey Academy by BBR	11:00:04
SSV	22	401	Jeremías González Ferioli	Can-Am Factory Team	11:26:21
Stock	40	500	Stéphane Peterhansel	Defender Rally	12:22:54
Truck	21	603	Mitchel van den Brink	Eurol Rally Sport Team de Rooy	11:23:25

FIM

Class	Overall	Number	Rider	Team	Time
RallyGP	1	73	Edgar Canet	Red Bull KTM Factory Racing	10:29:02
Rally2	5	84	Martim Ventura	Monster Energy Honda HRC	10:33:40
Rally3	37	175	Albert Martín	Triumph Spain	13:53:51
Quad	48	180	Antanas Kanopkinas	CFMOTO Thunder Racing Team	14:37:36

Open

Class	Overall	Number	Driver	Team	Time
Auto	1	701	Christian Lavieille	Team Land Cruiser Toyota Auto Body	13:44:17
SSV	2	721	Brahim Ettaiek	BE Racing	19:25:43

Classic

Class	Overall	Number	Driver	Team	Points
H2	1	832	Ali Oubassidi	Compagnie Saharienne	102
H3	2	802	Josef Unterholzner	R Team	258
H4	3	805	Davide Facchini	R Team	301

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