Turns out Matthias Walkner is pretty good at racing both two and four wheels.

In 2017, Walkner won the Rallye du Maroc bike overall. Nine years later, he claimed the RdM’s SSV category and his second straight World Rally-Raid Championship class win.

“I’m thrilled to be sitting next to one of my idols from my bike racing days,” his new navigator Oriol Mena commented.

Despite winning Challenger at the Desafío Ruta 40 in May, Walkner returned to SSV for Morocco in a new Can-Am Maverick R from South Racing. The ride naturally proved to be an upgrade over his old X3, winning three stages.

Fellow Can-Am driver Jeremías Gonzalez Ferioli was his main rival throughout the week. Ferioli was second to Walkner by just 7:13 in Stage 1 before edging him out for the Stage 2 win by a mere 40 seconds, the latter aided by a flat tire that Walkner sustained four kilometers before the finish. A difficult Stage 3 for Walkner saw him get lost for nine minutes before suffering two more flats, allowing Ferioli to beat him by 12 minutes.

Walkner struck back by winning Stage 4, but a ten-second speeding penalty prevented him from leapfrogging Ferioli. The two were separated by nine seconds going into the last day.

Any chance of a dramatic final battle was dashed when Ferioli experienced a mechanical failure and he finished 1:38:18 behind the leaders. Walkner cruised to the win with Andréa Deldossi stealing the runner-up spot.

“This is a really special win for me. We had some great battles, a tough setback on Day 3, but we came back and made a lot progress,” Walkner stated.

Despite the setback, Ferioli remains the SSV points leader with one race to go. Mindaugas Sidabras, his only remaining oppososition, trails by 29 points after finishing ninth in class and third among W2RC drivers.

Juraj Varga, an FIM-to-FIA convert like Walkner, had to deal with an alternator failure in Stage 2 and a broken rear brake caliper two days later. While unsatisfied with the result, it was a good learning experience and best to get the hiccups out of the way before Dakar.

Helder Oliveira and Juan Piferrer were both taken out on the first stage by crashes. The former was able to return to the bivouac where his team assessed the damage as terminal, while the latter crashed 36 kilometers into the special.

Aurélien Bouchet finished fifth in Stage 1, but his luck ran out the rest of the way. The next day, he ran out of fuel six kilometers before the refuel; his team estimated there to be 130 liters at the start, only for there to be just 90 liters that quickly ran dry due to navigation errors. A chase truck driven by Bob Morlon arrived with an extra 20 liters to fill up, but Bouchet still retired since the time limit had been exceeded. Stage 3 was a lot smoother before things literally went downhill on Stage 4: while climbing a dune, Bouchet’s left rear wheel got stuck and broke the driveshaft, causing the car to roll several times down to the bottom.

Results

Finish	Overall	Number	Driver	Navigator	Team	Class	Total Time	Margin
1	20	412	Matthias Walkner	Oriol Mena	South Racing	SSV1	18:35:43	Leader
2	33	421	Andréa Deldossi*	Jérémy Tricaud	BTR	SSV1	20:08:54	+ 1:33:11
3	34	401	Jeremías González Ferioli	Gonzalo Rinaldi	Can-Am Factory Team	SSV1	20:13:52	+ 1:38:09
4	40	414	Juan Miguel Fidel*	Javier Ventaja	Melilla Ciudad del Deporte BE Racing	T4	21:11:43	+ 2:36:00
5	46	415	Benoît Lepietre*	Rodrigue Relmy-Madinska	BTR	SSV1	22:18:51	+ 3:43:08
6	48	418	Jorge Cano*	Abelardo Ruanova	Old Friends Rally Team	SSV1	22:25:03	+ 3:49:20
7	50	420	Abdulaziz Al-Saud*	Meshal Al-Shammari	BE Racing	T4	23:04:22	+ 4:28:39
8	51	422	Eufrasio Anghileri*	Antonio Anghileri	Old Friends Rally Team	T4	23:32:03	+ 4:56:20
9	53	402	Mindaugas Sidabras	Ernestas Česokas	Izoton Sport	SSV1	24:19:08	+ 5:43:25
10	64	403	Hassan Jameel	Xavier Flick	South Racing	SSV1	37:22:24	+ 18:46:41
11	73	407	Juraj Varga*	Radovan Schneider	Varga Motorsport Team	T4	41:49:28	+ 23:13:45
12	75	417	Fabien Domas*	Axelle Domas	BTR	SSV1	42:49:41	+ 24:13:58
13	76	406	Tomáš Kubiena*	Miroslav Losos	Story Racing	SSV1	43:02:33	+ 24:26:50
14	78	419	Souad Mouktadiri*	Vincent Ferri	MS Racing	T4	47:35:38	+ 28:59:55
DNF	DNF	404	Eugenio Amos	Paolo Ceci	South Racing	SSV1	DNF	N/A
DNF	DNF	410	Juan Piferrer	Xavier Blanco	Buggy Masters	SSV1	DNF	N/A
DNF	DNF	411	Helder Oliveira*	Carlos Santos	Old Friends Rally Team	SSV1	DNF	N/A
DNF	DNF	416	Aurélien Bouchet*	Elisa Huguenin	BTR	SSV1	DNF	N/A

Stage winners

Stage	Overall	Driver	Time
Stage 1	31	Matthias Walkner	3:03:50
Stage 2	24	Jeremías González Ferioli	3:54:25
Stage 3	27	Jeremías González Ferioli	4:20:53
Stage 4	25	Matthias Walkner	3:28:46
Stage 5	23	Matthias Walkner	3:35:10

Featured image credit: Kin Marcin / Red Bull Content Pool