The Desafío Ruta 40 officially made its return Sunday after a four-year dormancy with a nine-kilometre Prologue through La Rioja. While rallies are not won and lost in something as short as the prologue, they can prove to be a quick litmus test of contenders over the next week of actual competition.
Indeed, World Rally-Raid Championship leader Nasser Al-Attiyah set the tone quickly as he and fellow Toyota Hilux driver Yazeed Al-Rajhi led the way. Al-Attiyah, who will finish out the season with Toyota despite his contract originally being scheduled to end after Argentina, beat Al-Rajhi by eight seconds.
Mitch Guthrie led the T3 entries in third overall. Gabriel Rodríguez, in his maiden T3 start, tied with Mattias Ekström though the latter had the edge for second by just five tenths of a second. Seth Quintero, who beat Guthrie for the Vegas to Reno win last week, finished seventh.
Non-W2RC drivers Eduard Pons and Gustavo Gallego were also split for the top in T4 by .5 seconds.
The top seven FIA overall cars recorded times below seven minutes, with the T3 of João Ferreira barely missing out by a second at 7:00.9.
Unlike the last round in Sonora where the Rally2 of Bradley Cox beat the top-level RallyGP bikes in the Prologue, RallyGP riders occupied the top ten for the leg here with Adrien Van Beveren beating Luciano Benavides by nine-tenths of a second. W2RC points leader Toby Price was sixth.
“Overall, I had a good feeling during this Prologue,” said Van Beveren. “I enjoy this kind of track: it’s technical and slippery, it was easy to make mistakes; I made only one when I entered too fast on a corner. My Honda CRF 450 Rally is going really well in these extreme conditions and this makes me feel even more confident.”
Diego Llanos placed eleventh as the top Rally2 ahead of Michael Docherty by half a second, the latter returning from a wrist injury that sidelined him for Abu Dhabi and Sonora. Cox was third in class.
Father and son Blas Zapag and Blas Zapag Peralta topped their classes in Open Auto and Open Moto, respectively.
The #671 Open UTV of Alfredo Olmedo drifted off course while navigating a left turn and dropped into the trees below, though he and navigator Daniel Lopez were not hurt.
The top ten in FIA and FIM got to select their starting positions for Stage #1 on Monday. Al-Rajhi will be the first car to start the leg while Al-Attiyah rolls out fourth, whereas José Ignacio Cornejo begins the rally as the opening bike and Van Beveren elected to be tenth.
Rather than simply adding the Prologue times to the overall classification when the main rally starts, the FIM and Open bike classes multiplied Sunday’s results by eight to determine how much time is included in the total; as such, Van Beveren’s time of 6:48 becomes 54:24 in the general ranking. Under Section 80.14 of the FIM rally-raid regulations, the Prologue’s Selective Section length determines how much the time should be multiplied by for the overall: the coefficient is eight if the leg is between two and ten kilometres, and five if ten kilometres or more.
Prologue winners
| Class | Number | Competitor | Team | Time |
| T1 | 200 | Nasser Al-Attiyah | Toyota Gazoo Racing | 6:33.9 |
| T3 | 302 | Mitch Guthrie | Red Bull Off-Road Junior Team | 6:50.9 |
| T4 | 402 | Eduard Pons* | South Racing Can-Am | 7:37.1 |
| RallyGP | 42 | Adrien Van Beveren | Monster Energy Honda Rally Team | 6:48.5 (54:52.5) |
| Rally2 | 29 | Diego Llanos* | Xraids Experience | 7:10.8 (57:20.8) |
| Rally3 | 123 | Mauricio Cueva | Xraids Experience | 8:58.1 (1:11:44.1) |
| Quad | 179 | Marcelo Medeiros* | Taguatur Racing Team | 7:26 (59:29) |
| Open Auto | 650 | Blas Zapag* | Copetrol Rally | 7:57.9 |
| Open T3 | 670 | Jeremías Gonzalez Ferioli* | Ferioli Racing Team | 7:19.8 |
| Open T4 | 678 | Juan José Semino* | Xcorpion Rally Racing | 8:34 |
| Open Moto | 606 | Blas Zapag Peralta* | MED Racing Team | 8:14 (1:05:52.7) |
| Open Quad | 623 | Santiago Rostan* | Pampa Rental Rally Team | 9:17 (1:14:16.3) |
* – Not competing in World Rally-Raid Championship
