Dakar Rally 2024 – Stage 10: Alula loop maintains the title fight

The Dakar returned to Alula for the loop before they began their journey south and the fight for victory remains alive and well among a handful of classes. 

It was day 13 of the 46th edition of the Dakar rally and the crews were subjected to a loop at their initial starting point Alula, where the first proper stage signaled the rally’s start. 

The Alula-to-Alula loop consisted of 371km of terrain before the crews embarked on their way south, to Yanbu, for the 11th stage. 

Bikes and Quads 

Motorbikes 

As the Dakar embraced its final three days of running, the Motorbike class was still close although the 10th and 11th stages would provide the best opportunity for those in the title fight to put in a final charge. 

For S10, it was complete domination from the Monster Energy Honda team as the team’s riders completed the top three. 

Ricky Brabec of Monster Energy took the stage win to edge out his lead over the former class leader, Ross Branch (Hero Motosports). Brabec won this marginally as his teammates Jose Florimo and Adrien Van Beveren finished the stage within a minute. 

Florimo missed out on victory by two seconds whereas Van Beveren finished 20 seconds behind. 

However, this doesn’t change the overall leaderboard from S9. Brabec remains the class leader ahead of Branch and Van Beveren who are over 10 minutes behind. 

Quads

For the Quads, Manuel Andujar of the 7240 Team racked up yet another stage win to maintain his lead over Alexandre Giroud (Yahama Racing). Juraj Varga, Varga Motorsports, completed the stage 16 minutes off the pace. 

Of the overall Quad standings, Andujar remains the class leader ahead of Giroud and Varga. However, Giroud is the only driver who can realistically remain in contention for the title win, two minutes back, whereas Varga sits three hours behind.   

Kevin Benavides on his KTM of the Red Bull KTM Factory Racing Team during the Stage 10 of the Dakar 2024 on January 17, 2024 around Al Ula, Saudi Arabia // Florent Gooden / DPPI / Red Bull Content Pool //

Cars and Trucks

Cars 

It was a heavyweight title fight between two former champions of the World Rally Championship, set between Team Audi’s Carlos Sainz and Bahrain Raid Xtreme’s Sebastien Loeb. 

Whilst the advantage remains in Sainz’s court at the end of the stage, the French WRC champion continued to cut down the deficit to his Spanish rival. Despite picking up punctures, Loeb went on to secure the stage win, four minutes ahead of Sainz who himself had picked up three punctures. 

Three punctures hindered Sainz over the day which forced Audi’s hand to play the team game. In need of spare tyres, Sainz’s teammate Mattias Ekstrom supplied the Spaniard with new tyres which allowed him to continue with minimal disruption losing only seven minutes to Loeb. 

In the overall standings, Sainz – the class leader – had 20 minutes in hand over Loeb with Toyota Gazoo Racing’s Lucas Moraes in third to complete the top three, just over an hour off Sainz’s time. 

Trucks

Gert Huzink’s all-Dutch crew for Jongbloed secured the stage win for the truck class in Alula as Martin Macik of MM Technology, relatively unchallenged in the overall standings, finished one minute back ahead of InstaForex’s Ales Loprais. 

Despite losing the stage win by a minute and a half, Macik can continue to cruise his way to Yanub with the Dakar win in sight as the class leader. Loprais will need to put in an almighty charge for Stage 11 to even threaten Macik as the all-Czech crew sit second, one hour behind. 

Mitchel Van Den Brink’s Dutch/Spanish crew completed the top three, in the overall standings, just over two hours off Macik’s time.

Lucas Moraes (BRA) and Armand Monleon (ESP) of team Toyota Gazoo Racing race during stage 09 of Rally Dakar 2024 in Al Ula, Saudi Arabia on January 17, 2024 // Marcelo Maragni / Red Bull Content Pool /

That’s it for the article; Dakar Rally 2024 – Stage 10: Alula loop maintains the title fight!

Read more Rally Raid here:

• Dakar Rally 2024 – Stage 6: 48H Chrono completed
• Dakar Rally – Stage 5: Tackling Empty Quarter dunes as 48H Chrono looms
• Dakar Rally – Stage 4: Loeb returns to the top
• Dakar Rally – Stage 3: Sunderland retires as Giroud returns to winning ways
• Dakar Rally – Stage 2: Al-Attiyah returns to form as trucks struggle
• Dakar Rally – Stage 1: crashes and punctures

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Kamron Kent

Hi, I’m Kamron. I created ApexMotorsports.co.uk in the dying embers of the 2021 Formula 1 world championship. It allowed me freedom to write whatever I wanted to write about which was all things motorsports, my passion.

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