Yazeed Al-Rajhi was the top driver in Stage #1 of the Desafío Ruta 40, but two tyre punctures in the final thirty kilometres were his demise.
After finishing second to Nasser Al-Attiyah in Sunday’s Prologue, Al-Rajhi took the lead after sixty kilometres. Although he built an advantage over his fellow Hilux, the script flipped on him with a pair of tyre failures that enabled Al-Attiyah to win the stage by a minute and six seconds.
Sebastián Halpern, the only non-Hilux in T1, joined them on the podium and was 4:19 back of the winner.
Al-Rajhi was not the only leader to encounter unexpected trouble. In T3, João Ferreira had led much of the first half before gearbox problems brought his car to a stop after the checkpoint at KM 130, allowing Mitch Guthrie to take the lead. Ferreira consequently finished last in class and nearly an hour behind Guthrie.
Tyre attrition was a hairy topic in the mountains and gravel tracks leading from and to La Rioja. Like Al-Rajhi, Mattias Ekström had two punctures that knocked him off the T3 podium as Francisco López Contardo and Seth Quintero took those spots.
“It’s been a really long stage,” said RallyGP rider Luciano Benavides. “At the beginning, we started out through some riverbeds and then after that there was a lot of pistes, so it was very fast and very slippery. We destroyed the tyres today and thankfully it didn’t cost me as much time as some other riders. There wasn’t too much navigation today, so I just kept my head down and stayed safe.”
Benavides finished second in his class to Tosha Schareina who, while not racing for the World Rally-Raid Championship, continued to impress in his second W2RC round with the manufacturer. Schareina leads Benavides in the general ranking by just a second; overall times for FIM classes are determined by adding stage results with Prologue times, the latter multiplied by eight (Schareina set a time of 6:51 in the Prologue, amounting to 54:48 in the overall). Prologue winner Adrien Van Beveren is third overall, 1:09 back of Schareina, after his bib mousse came loose.
Rally2 rider Michael Docherty hoped to play spoiler and kept pace with Schareina throughout the day, but the higher tier eventually caught up with him and he settled for ninth overall though still beat Bradley Cox by five minutes for the class win.
In contrast to when he won Rally2 at the Dakar Rally and dominated the Sonora Rally, Romain Dumontier has endured a nightmare start to the DR 40. After a mechanical problem in the Prologue necessitated an engine change that led to a fifteen-minute penalty, he crashed in Stage #1 and had a minute added to his time for speeding. He finished the stage in seventh and is twenty-one minutes behind Paolo Lucci, who sits fourth overall and maintains a three-point edge in the championship.
Penalties were also prevalent in RallyGP as Sam Sunderland, Ricky Brabec, and Pablo Quintanilla were slapped with minutes. Brabec had been running third before falling back to sixth, while a six-minute penalty for being late to the time control sank him to ninth. Sunderland conceded a lack of track time due to injuries has knocked him off his pace, with his infraction coming when he braked too late on slick terrain while entering a speed zone.
Conversely, Eugenio Amos got nine minutes removed after he stopped to assist fellow T1 driver Denis Krotov‘s team following a crash at KM 316.2. The gesture dropped his finishing time of 3:17:18 to 3:08:09, moving him past Juan Cruz Yacopini (3:08:30) for fourth in T1.
After being involved in a massive crash in the Prologue that sent his Can-Am down a cliff, Alfredo Olmedo was able to get his vehicle fixed in time for Monday and finished fourth in the Open T3 category. Diego Blas, the reigning South American Rally Race winner in T3.2, won in Open T4.
Stage #1 winners
| Class | Number | Competitor | Team | Time |
| T1 | 200 | Nasser Al-Attiyah | Toyota Gazoo Racing | 2:57:31 |
| T3 | 302 | Mitch Guthrie | Red Bull Off-Road Junior Team | 3:12:31 |
| T4 | 402 | Eduard Pons* | South Racing Can-Am | 3:37:25 |
| RallyGP | 68 | Tosha Schareina* | Honda Team | 3:00:12 |
| Rally2 | 111 | Michael Docherty | BAS World KTM Racing Team | 3:08:23 |
| Rally3 | 122 | Ardit Kurtaj | Xraids Experience | 3:52:12 |
| Quad | 152 | Manuel Andújar | 7240 Team | 3:23:00 |
| Open Auto | 650 | Blas Zapag* | Copetrol Rally | 3:38:37 |
| Open T3 | 670 | Jeremías Gonzalez Ferioli* | Ferioli Racing Team | 3:26:29 |
| Open T4 | 675 | Diego Blas* | GM Motorsport | 3:55:44 |
| Open Moto | 611 | Juan Cruz Carrizo* | JC Electricidad SA | 3:38:08 |
| Open Quad | 623 | Santiago Rostan* | Pampa Rental Rally Team | 3:56:10 |
Leaders after Stage #1
| Class | Number | Competitor | Team | Time |
| T1 | 200 | Nasser Al-Attiyah | Toyota Gazoo Racing | 2:57:31 |
| T3 | 302 | Mitch Guthrie | Red Bull Off-Road Junior Team | 3:12:31 |
| T4 | 402 | Eduard Pons* | South Racing Can-Am | 3:37:25 |
| RallyGP | 68 | Tosha Schareina* | Honda Team | 3:55:00 |
| Rally2 | 111 | Michael Docherty | BAS World KTM Racing Team | 4:05:51 |
| Rally3 | 122 | Ardit Kurtaj | Xraids Experience | 5:04:20 |
| Quad | 152 | Manuel Andújar | 7240 Team | 4:22:36 |
| Open Auto | 650 | Blas Zapag* | Copetrol Rally | 3:38:37 |
| Open T3 | 670 | Jeremías Gonzalez Ferioli* | Ferioli Racing Team | 3:26:29 |
| Open T4 | 675 | Diego Blas* | GM Motorsport | 3:55:44 |
| Open Moto | 600 | Joaquín Debeljuh* | RVM Rally Team | 4:46:49 |
