The Dakar Rally do not approach the marathon-refuge stages like the others and the one that set out this morning from Wadi ad Dawasir included navigational difficulties that soon changed the face of the special for the main protagonists over the last days.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Luciano Benavides\u2019 wonderful adventure is perhaps not over but his stay at the top of the overall rankings has been interrupted at the very least. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The major blow today was struck by\u00a0Tosha Schareina, who was the smartest at the start of the special in choosing the right canyon at a point where his rivals selected the wrong option, and was especially the quickest at the very end of Stage 9, which he completed with the best time: 6\u201924\u2019\u2019 quicker than\u00a0Daniel Sanders, and 6\u201922\u2019\u2019 in front of his Honda team-mate\u00a0Ricky Brabec.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Spanish rider, who is still fourth in the overall rankings but with a gap reduced to 15 minutes form the top, can continue to kick himself over the ten-minute penalty he received on the first marathon stage, without which he would be locked in the duel with\u00a0Daniel Sanders\u00a0that everyone was expecting. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The defending champion is the main beneficiary of the day, as the confusion shared with his teammate\u00a0Luciano Benavides\u00a0meant he loses a little less time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Australian KTM rider has, as a result, regained the lead in the overall rankings, where he now has a 6’24\u2019\u2019 advantage over his American rival\u00a0Ricky Brabec. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, this margin is not particularly comfortable ahead of the second leg of the marathon-refuge stage, on which the Honda rider will start three minutes behind him and where the route including challenging dunes may hold some surprises in store.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Dakar Rally do not approach the marathon-refuge stages like the others and the one that set out<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7948,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[311,310],"class_list":["post-7947","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-newsbeat","tag-motorsports","tag-rally"],"aioseo_notices":[],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Tosha-Schareina_compressed.jpg",2002,1127,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Tosha-Schareina_compressed-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Tosha-Schareina_compressed-300x169.jpg",300,169,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Tosha-Schareina_compressed-768x432.jpg",640,360,true],"large":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Tosha-Schareina_compressed-1024x576.jpg",640,360,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Tosha-Schareina_compressed-1536x865.jpg",1536,865,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Tosha-Schareina_compressed.jpg",2002,1127,false],"morenews-large":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Tosha-Schareina_compressed-825x575.jpg",825,575,true],"morenews-medium":["https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Tosha-Schareina_compressed-590x410.jpg",590,410,true]},"author_info":{"info":["admin"]},"category_info":"Newsbeat<\/a>","tag_info":"Newsbeat","comment_count":"0","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Tosha-Schareina_compressed.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7947"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7947\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7949,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7947\/revisions\/7949"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.infinitysport.asia\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}