Dakar 2026, Stage 5: Ford strikes back to win but…

Mitch Guthrie led a 1-2-3 finish for Ford in the fifth stage of the 2026 Dakar Rally, but Toyota’s Henk Lategan did enough to hold on to the overall lead.

Thursday’s 371km test from Al-Ula to Hail saw a two-horse race between Ford team-mates Guthrie and Nani Roma, with the duo trading positions as they inched closer to the central regions of Saudi Arabia.

Guthrie set the early pace in the #222 Ford Raptor, pulling out an advantage of more than a minute in the #228 Ford Raptor.

Two-time Dakar winner Roma, by contrast, made a slow start and even dropped behind Dacia’s Lucas Moraes into third at the halfway point of the stage.

With about 100km to run, American Guthrie still had a comfortable buffer at the front, but Roma managed to bring the gap down to just 21s at the penultimate checkpoint.

In the final 50km dash to the finish, the Spaniard jumped into the lead, provisionally taking a narrow four-second win over his younger team-mate.

However, Roma was later handed a 1m10s penalty for overspeeding, handing the reins back to Guthrie. This made the 29-year-old the first double winner in the 48th edition of Dakar, having also triumphed in the third stage around Al-Ula on Tuesday.

Roma was eventually classified 1m06s behind in second position, while MD Sports’ Martin Prokop rounded out the top-three in his customer Raptor.

Three more Ford entries finished at the sharp end on Thursday, with M-Sport's Dennis Krotov and factory drivers Mattias Ekstrom and Carlos Sainz Sr ending up fifth, sixth and seventh respectively.

#223 The Dacia Sandriders Dacia: Lucas Moraes, Dennis Zenz (Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool)

The only driver to mix between the Fords was reigning World Rally-Raid Champion Moraes, who piloted his Dacia Sandrider to fourth, 3m38s down on Guthrie.

The Blue Oval’s dominant run followed a tough outing for the brand in the first marathon stage on Wednesday, where none of its drivers finished inside the top 10. The result highlighted the volatility witnessed in the first week of Dakar, with the form of Ford and Toyota in particular fluctuating wildly day to day.

Toyota, which scored a dominant seven-minute win on Stage 4, was reduced to third-best manufacturer on Thursday, with Joao Ferreira finishing eighth in the best of the Hiluxes.

He was closely followed by team-mate Guy Botterill, with Seth Quintero completing the top 10 Toyota’s W2RC squad.

Last year’s runner-up Lategan paid the price for opening the stage on a day when bikes followed a different route, leaving no tracks for him to follow. The South African conceded almost 13 minutes over the course of the day, provisionally ending the day 16th in the standings.

Meanwhile, nine-time World Rally champion Sebastien Loeb brought his Dacia home in 11th place, losing further time to his Toyota and Ford rivals.

Nasser Al-Attiyah had originally finished a fraction of a minute ahead of team-mate Loeb, but dropped to 15th in the table after being hit with a two-minute time penalty.

With just one more stage left before the official rest day in Riyadh, Lategan continued to lead the general classification for Toyota, but with a smaller lead of 3m17s over Al-Attiyah.

Ford drivers occupy the next four positions in the rankings, with Ekstrom followed by Roma, Sainz Sr and Thursday winner Guthrie. The top four drivers are only separated by 8m33s, but Guthrie sits a further eight minutes back, having yet to fully recover from the time he lost while opening the road on Stage 4.

Dacia duo Moraes and Loeb sit seventh and eighth respectively, around a minute behind Guthrie, while Century’s Mathieu Serradori has dropped to ninth after a difficult fifth stage.

The top 10 is rounded out by Prokop in the best of the independent entries.

Dakar Rally - Overall results after Stage 5:

Pos	Driver	Car	Time/Gap
1	Henk Lategan	Toyota	20h36m44s
2	Nasser Al-Attiyah	Dacia	+3m17s
3	Mattias Ekstrom	Ford	+5m38s
4	Nani Roma	Ford	+6m59s
5	Carlos Sainz Sr	Ford	+8m33s
6	Mitch Guthrie	Ford	+16m23s
7	Lucas Moraes	Dacia	+17m11s
8	Sebastien Loeb	Dacia	+17m55s
9	Mathieu Serradori	Century	+19m40s
10	Martin Prokop	Ford	+19m55s