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Dacia Sandriders finished Rallye du Maroc 2026 with the lead in the FIA World Rally-Raid Championship manufacturers’ standings, but the result was much less successful than the team’s pace at the start suggested. All three Sandriders reached the finish, yet technical failures, an accident and a late suspension failure removed the team from the fight for the overall victory.
Lucas Moraes and Pablo Moreno set the third-fastest time on the final stage, completing the 275.3-kilometre special in 3 hours, 19 minutes and 43 seconds. Nasser Al-Attiyah and Fabian Lurquin were fifth in 3 hours, 20 minutes and 26 seconds. Sébastien Loeb and Édouard Boulanger were classified 38th for the day after being towed to the finish with a damaged front suspension.
The final Dacia positions
The provisional Ultimate classification published by Dacia places Al-Attiyah and Lurquin 16th overall, 1 hour, 44 minutes and 1 second behind the rally leader. Moraes and Moreno finished 31st, with a deficit of 14 minutes and 2.47 seconds in the classification released after the fifth stage. Loeb and Boulanger ended the event 36th, 21 hours, 39 minutes and 19 seconds behind the leader.
Those positions do not reflect the pace of the Sandriders over the whole week. Moraes opened the rally with second place, only three seconds from the stage winner, and moved into the overall lead after the second stage. His rally changed during stage three, when an accident in the final 15 kilometres ended the crew’s overall victory hopes. Dacia said that the incident also removed the team’s chance of a third consecutive Rallye du Maroc win.
Al-Attiyah lost substantial time to a transmission problem during stage two. The Qatari driver continued and reached the finish every day, but the gap made a return to the podium impossible. Loeb’s event was affected by two electrical problems and then by the suspension damage on the final stage.
Loeb loses the championship lead
Loeb and navigator Édouard Boulanger arrived in Morocco at the top of the drivers’ and navigators’ standings. After the event, the FIA standings list Seth Quintero first among drivers and Andrew Short first among navigators, both on 134 points. Loeb is second with 120 points, while Boulanger also has 120. Al-Attiyah and Fabian Lurquin are third in their respective tables with 115 points.
The titles are not decided. The 2026 season still has Abu Dhabi, scheduled for 22–27 November. Quintero’s advantage over Loeb is 14 points, while Loeb is only five points ahead of Al-Attiyah. Dacia’s more comfortable position is in the manufacturers’ championship: it has 372 points, compared with 326 for Toyota Gazoo Racing W2RC and 232 for Ford Racing.
How the victory disappeared
The Moroccan rally became a sequence of moments in which Dacia had the speed to lead but could not convert it into a final result. Moraes was competitive in the opening two days and led the rally before his accident. He returned with fourth on the penultimate stage and third on the final stage, showing that the repaired Sandrider still had the pace to run at the front.
Loeb won stage three and appeared to be back in contention. On the final stage, the French crew was again fighting near the front, but it had to drive through another competitor’s dust. Near the end, the car entered a difficult descent into a dry riverbed. Loeb slowed after seeing the obstacle, but the Sandrider landed on a large rock and damaged the front suspension. The team did not have the required replacement part, so the car was towed to the finish.
This is the difference between stage pace and rally-raid results. Navigation, dust, tyres, cooling and the ability to repair a car away from service can matter as much as outright speed. Dacia showed the performance needed to lead several stages, but the decisive time losses came when the crews were already in positions that could have produced a strong overall result.
What Dacia takes to Abu Dhabi
The team still leaves Morocco with meaningful positives. Every Dacia reached the finish, Moraes and Moreno demonstrated that their new partnership can run at the front, and Dacia remains first among manufacturers. The team also remains involved in all three championship fights before the final round.
The preparation for Abu Dhabi now has a clear technical focus. Dacia needs to investigate Loeb’s electrical failures, understand the transmission issue on Al-Attiyah’s car and review the circumstances of Moraes’s accident. These are different problems rather than one single fault, so the analysis must cover both the Sandrider and the crews’ risk management.
Rallye du Maroc therefore acts as a warning before the final round. The Sandrider had the speed to lead, but the championship is decided by completing the last kilometres without losing the result. Abu Dhabi will require Dacia to combine performance with reliability and a more conservative approach to risk. The manufacturers’ lead is still real, while the drivers’ and navigators’ titles are now much more open than they were before the start in Agadir.
