World Champion nevertheless remains in the Top 10
One day after climbing to 3rd place in the SSV category at the 2026 Dakar Rally, Rally-Raid World Champion Alexandre Pinto, navigated by Bernardo Oliveira, endured a very turbulent second part of the marathon stage today.
“We’ve finally finished the marathon stage. Yesterday went well for us. We were conservative, had no issues, no punctures, finished the selective sector with a good result and moved up to third in the SSV standings. We camped out with no signal, no communications, and took care of our vehicle ourselves. Today we couldn’t say the same. During the stage, a rear shock absorber failed. We don’t really know why, but something happened. Luckily for us, Bruno and Eurico stopped and gave us one of the shock absorbers from their car. Since they’re, in a way, already out of contention, they carried on without one shock absorber in their vehicle. To them and to Santag Racing, our sincere thanks. That help allowed us to finish, although we lost two hours. It will be harder for us to fight for the very top positions, but there’s still a lot of Dakar ahead. We’ll keep fighting and we won’t give up,” explained the Old Friends Rally Team driver, who is competing at the Dakar at the wheel of a Polaris.
This setback caused the reigning World Champion pairing to drop from 3rd to 10th in the SSV category and to lose the W2RC lead they had held since the opening stage of this first event of the season.
Tomorrow’s stage, the sixth and the longest of this 48th edition of the Dakar Rally, with 331 km against the clock and 589 km of liaison, will be contested between Ha’il and Riyadh. The route runs mainly through the Qassim region, with dunes sometimes separated by valleys. A selective section run entirely on sand.
Source: Alexandre Pinto official press release
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