Dakar: Mitch Gatri won the stage and leads overall.

      Following Seth Quintero’s win on the second stage of the Dakar rally-raid yesterday, Tuesday belonged to another American driver: today Mitch Guthrie, competing in the Ford Raptor No. 228, covered the third stage distance faster than anyone else.

      Until 2024 Guthrie competed in the Challenger class; in 2025 he debuted in the T1+ category and finished 5th overall, but today he stepped up to a new level. Part of that success came from he and his co-driver, Kellon Welch, managing to avoid tyre punctures.

      In addition, this factory Ford Racing crew also took the overall lead, although their advantage over the Czech duo of Martin Prokop, driving an identical race SUV, is only 26 seconds. But today Guthrie beat the Czech by almost two and a half minutes; Prokop, representing the Orlen Jipocar Team, finished second.

      Third was Guy Botterill (South Africa), a Toyota Gazoo Racing driver; fourth was Lucas Moraes in a Dacia Sandrider, and rounding out the top five was his teammate, Spanish driver Cristina Gutiérrez, equalling her best-ever Dakar stage result.

      After the third stage the overall standings present an interesting picture: the top five positions are all occupied by crews in Ford Raptors, and Carlos Sainz has risen to fourth, closing in on his Swedish teammate Mattias Ekström.

      But today Sainz Sr. was seventh and finished ahead of Ekström, who was ninth. By the way, crew No. 217 — Denis Krotov and Konstantin Zhiltsov, who are also driving a Ford Raptor — moved up to tenth after the third stage.

      As for Sébastien Loeb, the driver for The Dacia Sandriders team who is always automatically counted among the favourites, he finished only 25th, 25 minutes and 25 seconds behind the leader.

      “The characteristics of today’s stage didn’t suit our car,” rued the Frenchman. “We had to drive at only 20% of its capabilities just to avoid punctures, but however careful we were, we still punctured two tyres after only a hundred kilometres. And there were another three hundred km ahead, and no spare tyres left...”

      Among the motorcyclists the best performance came from Spaniard Tosha Skarein, a factory Honda rider, which lifted him to third in the overall standings, where veteran Australian Daniel Sanders, riding a KTM, still leads.

      In the Challenger category a small sensation was produced by 23-year-old Dutch rider Puck Claassen, who became only the fifth woman in Dakar history to win a stage of this gruelling supermarathon. Together with her Argentine co-driver Augusto Sans, she is competing in a lightweight GRallyteam G-Ecko off‑roader prepared for rally-raid by the Dutch G-Rally team.

      They beat their nearest pursuers, the crew of Yasir Seidan from Nasser Racing, by almost eight and a half minutes, although the experienced Saudi rider still leads the overall classification.

      There was a change of leader in the SSV class: after today’s stage Americans Brock Heger and Max Eddy from Sébastien Loeb’s team, competing in a Polaris RZR PRO R, moved up to first place. They also top the overall SSV classification.

      In the truck category the best was the crew of Mitchel van den Brink — the Dutch trio are racing a Dakar EVO4 truck built by MM Technology. They finished just over a minute ahead of Czech crew Aleš Loprais, the winner of the first stage, who is third overall, only narrowly behind another Czech trio led by Martin Masik.

      On Wednesday the rally-raid competitors face another very important and even tougher day, when they must complete the first part of the marathon stage, on which the timed sections alone total 421 km. Moreover, crews competing in four‑wheel categories will have to navigate entirely on their own, because the motorcyclists will take a different route and there will be no motorcycle tracks in the middle of the Saudi deserts.

      In addition, everyone will have to sleep simply in tents — another “treat” provided by the organisers. That is, there will be no showers or other “comforts,” so that everyone can fully taste the delights of these competitions. Repairs will also have to be done by the crews themselves, without the technical crews of their teams coming to help.