Mitch Guthrie became the first driver to win a second stage in the Dakar Rally after Nani Roma was penalized for speeding in the Saudi desert on Thursday.
Guthrie won his first major stage on Tuesday and the American prevailed again on the 371-kilometer second half of the marathon stage from AlUla east to Hail.
Roma thought he'd won his 14th career car stage — one more than he achieved on a motorbike — after four hours by four seconds but a 70-second penalty meant he lost the stage by 66 seconds. Martin Prokop's third place gave Ford the podium sweep, The AP news reported.
Henk Lategan, nearly 13 minutes behind the winner, held on to the overall lead in his Toyota but Nasser Al-Attiyah's second-placed Dacia and Mattias Ekström's third-placed Ford closed to less than six minutes behind.
But for a brief time near the end, Lategan opened the way for almost the entire day.
“It was really, really, really difficult, one of the most difficult stages I've had to open,” he said. “There were no bike tracks and a lot of the tracks were really, really small tracks. The rain washed a lot of them away. The last two days you didn't really want to open but Brett did a great job to get us here. For the car to make it through two days of marathon is actually an amazing job by the team seeing that this car was tested for the first time three months ago.”
Roma improved from seventh to fourth and Guthrie from 13th to sixth. They were separated by Ford teammate Carlos Sainz, the four-time champion less than nine minutes off the pace with eight stages to go, including another two-day marathon next week outside Bisha.
Another Benavides first to Hail Argentine rider Luciano Benavides won the 356-kilometer motorbike stage, emulating his brother Kevin, who won the stage into Hail in 2024.
Hero's Ignacio Cornejo was second, nearly four minutes behind, and defending champion Daniel Sanders third.
Benavides was chasing KTM teammate Edgar Canet, the prologue and stage one winner, until Canet suffered a tire blowout. He repaired it but came home slowly, 4 1/2 hours after Benavides. Canet started the day fourth overall. Ross Branch lost over an hour and fell from sixth overall when the foam on his rear wheel melted.
Benavides recovered from knee, shoulder and back injuries in October at the Moroccan Rally to line up in his ninth Dakar. Early in Thursday's stage he suffered a high-speed crash but he and his motorbike were unscathed.
“I'm super, super proud because it was not clear if I would race this Dakar,” Benavides said. “I'm super emotional because I ... suffered quite a lot to be here and get another stage win."
He's at a career-best third in the general standings, six minutes behind teammate Sanders, who regained the lead from Honda's Tosha Schareina and Ricky Brabec.
Brabec was still second, two minutes back but Schareina was penalized 10 minutes for forgetting to leave the bivouac between the flags. He's still fourth overall and only 12 minutes back.
Teammate Adrien van Beveren, third the last two years, was running second in the stage when a wire became stuck in his wheel. He lost 30 minutes and recovered to ninth but was 53 minutes behind overall.
