12/01/2026

Mattias Ekstrom wins stage after late drama for Henk Lategan

Ford’s Mattias Ekstrom has been gifted victory on Stage 7 of the 2026 Dakar Rally after long-time leader Henk Lategan hit trouble in the closing part and dropped over 10 minutes.

Lategan had been poised to take both the stage win and the overall lead as the Toyota driver headed the pack at the final checkpoint before the finish, having led Ekstrom by 1m46s, but the South African lost all of his advantage in the run to the chequered flag of the 459km stage between Riyadh and Wadi Ad-Dawasir.

Instead it was Ekstrom who took the stage win, 4m27s up on Toyota’s Joao Ferreira, as Lategan slipped to 13th on the stage’s final standings – 8m35s behind the Ford driver.

Not only did Lategan lose his shot at becoming the first repeat stage winner of the 2026 event, but he also lost the provisional lead in the overall standings. The Toyota driver had moved ahead of Nasser Al-Attiyah at the 375km checkpoint, but the time lost on the final chunk of the stage has seen him slip to fourth overall.

After the stage Lategan revealed a broken damper sustained in a dip was the cause of his time loss as it needed replacing but wasn’t too downbeat about the time lost.

«We were having a really nice day and then there was one section, it was a small bump and then a dip, and as we hit the dip it broke the damper. It broke the damper shaft clean off in the middle,” Lategan said,

«That was it, the car was hanging on one side. We were carrying a spare damper so we stopped, took the old one out and then had to put a new one in. But yeah, it does a lot of damage when it breaks as well, so there’s bits and pieces you have to cut off and get out of the way. It took a bit of time to fix that.

#202 Toyota Gazoo Racing W2Rc Toyota: Henk Lategan, Brett Cummings

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

«Hopefully we can have two more good days from now on and then we’ll be back in it, but it’s really tough.»

Lategan’s late drop duly shuffled the pack, with Mitch Guthrie taking third place on the stage behind winner and team-mate Ekstrom and Toyota’s Ferreira. Toby Price missed out on the stage rostrum by just six seconds in fourth for the factory Toyota squad, ahead of Dacia pair Lucas Moraes and Sebastien Loeb, with another Toyota in Seth Quintero in seventh.

Mathieu Serradori continued to impress for Century Racing with eighth place on the stage, as Ford pair Carlos Sainz Sr and Nani Roma rounded out the top 10.

Earlier in the day, it was announced that Roma was declared winner of Stage 5 after a 1m10s penalty for overspeeding was overturned by FIA stewards.

Having looked likely to lose the overall lead, Dacia’s Al-Attiyah’s 11th place on the stage has preserved his place at the top of the standings, but it has been trimmed by Ekstrom to 4m47s who is now his closest challenger, with fellow Ford driver Roma also promoted up a spot to third due to Lategan’s late fade.

Lategan is now fourth, 7m21s off overall leader Al-Attiyah, with Ford’s Sainz in fifth and Loeb in sixth for Dacia.

Guthrie’s strong showing on the stage has seen him close the gap to the leaders but he remains seventh overall for Ford, with Serradori also remaining in eighth, while Moraes has moved up to ninth as Eryk Goczal was pushed down to 10th – the entire top 10 split by under 26 minutes.

Dakar Rally — Overall results after Stage 7:

Pos	Driver	Team / car	time/Gap
1	Nasser Al-Attiyah	#299 – The Dacia Sandriders	28h10m15s
2	Mattias Ekstrom	#226 – Ford Racing	+4m47s
3	Nani Roma	#227 – Ford Racing	+7m15s
4	Henk Lategan	#202 – Toyota Gazoo Racing W2RC	+7m21s
5	Carlos Sainz Sr	#225 – Ford Racing	+10m26s
6	Sebastien Loeb	#219 – The Dacia Sandriders	+15m39s
7	Mitch Guthrie	#228 – Ford Racing	+19m20s
8	Mathieu Serradori	#214 – Century Racing Factory Team	+21m55s
9	Lucas Moraes	#223 – The Dacia Sandriders	+24m39s
10	Eryk Goczal	#205 – Energylandia Rally Team	+25m25s