Defending Dakar winner Yazeed Al-Rajhi explains disastrous opening stage

Defending car champion Yazeed Al-Rajhi faces an uphill battle at the 2026 Dakar Rally after a troubled opening stage, in which he lost significant time and incurred a heavy penalty.

Shortly after his Dakar victory in 2025, Al-Rajhi and navigator Timo Gottschalk suffered injuries that forced them to miss several rounds of the World Rally-Raid Championship. The Saudi driver and his German co-driver were only able to contest a handful of — admittedly unremarkable — warm-up events late in the year before starting their title defence this weekend.

Al-Rajhi showed solid pace in the prologue with sixth place, but the first stage counting towards the overall classification did not go to plan. He finished 39th on the 305km test in Yanbu on the west coast of Saudi Arabia, losing almost 29 minutes to winner Guillaume de Mevius (X-raid Mini).

A large part of that deficit was caused by a 16-minute penalty for missing a waypoint and committing a speeding infringement. Even without the penalty, however, the Overdrive Toyota driver still lost nearly 13 minutes to de Mevius.

“At a tricky section with many canyons, we chose the wrong one, even though Timo had the right feeling,” Al-Rajhi explained.

“We decided to try it anyway. Thanks to the dust from other competitors, we managed to find the correct route again, but it was too late. Not an ideal start to the Dakar Rally and a big time loss.”

That was not the only issue, as Gottschalk explained after the opening stage.

“We already had two punctures early on, before taking the wrong canyon at a difficult point,” the German added.

Taking the wrong turn ultimately led to missing a waypoint, which resulted in the time penalty for the crew.

“Although we were back on the correct route quite quickly, we unfortunately validated the next waypoint and therefore received the penalty. Not a good start, but there is still a lot of terrain ahead of us and we certainly won’t give up. We will try to recover as much ground as possible over the next 12 stages,» he said.

On Monday, Al-Rajhi and Gottschalk will get their first opportunity to bounce back from the disappointing opening stage. The second competitive stage covers 400 kilometres and takes the field from Yanbu to Al-‘Ula.

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— The Motorsport.com Team