Summarize

Dakar’s fourth day of Car racing once again brought extreme fluctuations in fortunes and results as South African Gazoo Toyota crew Henk Lategan and Brett Cummings dominated. The Overdrive Hilux duo jumped from eleventh overnight to lead overall on Wednesday’s tough 452 km haul to the no-service overnight bivouac on a separate route to the motorcycles.

Lategan and Cummings did just as American Ford crew Mitch Guthrie and Kellon Walch and had done to hop from fourteenth to the lead on Tuesday. Guthre and Walch dropped back to thirteenth on Wednesday as the fortune of favourable starting positions fell on the Toyota army on a day without motorcycle tracks to follow. And like it was for Ford on Tuesday, no less than seven Toyotas filled the top ten with the best of the Fords only eleventh.

Lategan and Cummings were imperious, taking seven minutes out of nearest challengers, Qatari five-time Dakar winner, Nasser Al-Attiyah, and Fabian Lurquin Dacia Sandrider. Impressive Polish brothers Goczal, Eryk and Szymon Gospodarczyk and Marek and Maciej Marton ended third and fourth in their Toyota Hiluxes from French nine-time World Rally Champion Sébastien Loeb and Édouard Boulanger’s Dacia, and another of the Goczal Hilux dynasty, Mical alongside Diego Ortega.

Aussie former bike winner Toby Price and Armand Monleon ended seventh in their Overdrive Gazoo Hilux ahead of on form South Africans Brian Baragwanath and Leonard Cremer’s Century Factory CR-7. South African Champion Saood Variawa and Frenchman Francois Cazalet’s SVR Gazoo Toyota Hilux followed ahead of ever-impressive Frenchmen, Mathieu Serradori and Loïc Minaudier’s Made in SA Century Factory CR-7 and American Seth Quintero and Andrew Short in the third Overdrive Gazoo Hilux.

Factory Ford Raptor crews, Mattias Ekström and Emil Bergkvist and Carlos Sainz and Lucas Cruz followed in twelfth from Spanish lady hero Laia Sanz and Mario Gerini’s Ebro Century CR-7 and Nani Roma and Álex Haro’s Ford. Without those bike tracks to follow, the first crews on the road suffered as they struggled to find the way. Guthrie and Walch, Czech Ford privateers Martin Prokop and Viktor Chytka and South African Guy Botterill and Spaniard Oriol Mena’s SVR Gazoo Hilux ended 23rd, 24th and 27th.

The day started with Loeb leading Variawa, Lategan and Baragwanath at the first waypoint. Until Lategan took over with Al Attiyah in chase and that’s how it continued as the rest were left to squabble over third. It was not all champagne and roses for Toyota, however. 2025 winners, home hero Yazeed Al-Rajhi and Timo Gottschalk bowed out after their Gazoo Hilux hit trouble to end any dreams of a back to back victory.

So, Lategan now leads Al Attiyah by four minutes overall, with Ford men Ekstrom and Sainz fourth and fifth, and Serradori a brilliant fifth from Variawa, Roma and Loeb in eighth. If the opening days are anything to go by, a twenty minute lead in nowhere near safe, and with the above crews now starting first on Thursday, their prospects of maintaining the advantage seem slim with the top eight cars split by less than those 20 minutes.

Further back, the leading  T4 Side by Sides and T3 Challengers were involved in a mighty scrap. US T4 lad Brock Heger’s Can AM led Taurus T3 quartet, Nicolas Cavigliasso, Pau Navarro, Dani Akeel, and Yasir Seaidan on the stage after Tuesday T3 winner Puck Klaasen lost half an hour. Overall, Seaidan led Navarro and Cavigliasso in Challenger, and Heger was ahead of Xavier de Soultrait and Hunter Miller in the Side by Sides.

There was action in the Stock class when the rookie Defenders appeared to uncork their bottle. Mr. Dakar Stéphane Peterhansel and Michaël Metge led US lady Dakar star Sara Price and Sean Berriman and Lithuanian Rokas Baciuska and Oriol Vidal as the three Land Rovers opened the gap to the pursuing Land Cruisers. Baciuska led Peterhansel and Price overall. Martin Macik’s MMT and Vaidotas Zala’s Iveco fought for the Truck day lead, with Mitchel van den Brink’s Ivecos in chase. Macic also led van den Brink and Zala overall.

Thursday’s second half of the first Marathon stage heads to Ha'il on another demanding 357 kilometre route. Your Dakar Car Report is powered by Toyota Gazoo Racing. Click here for the Bike Day report.