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Since winning the 2021 Championship Off-Road Pro 2 championship, Keegan Kincaid has endured a difficult two years. He only scored a podium in his title defence before his 2023 has been nothing short of abysmal. However, he finally caught a break Sunday at the biggest short course race of the year when he dominated the Red Bull World Cup at Crandon International Raceway.

After starting on the front row alongside his fellow Pro 2 trucks, Kincaid took the lead going into the opening corner before the race was paused as the #12 of Extreme E driver Amanda Sorensen flipped just two corners into the race. The race eventually resumed and Kincaid never looked back, putting on his finest showing since his championship year to win the World Cup for the second time in three years.

“I haven’t got a holeshot all weekend long and really struggled,” Kincaid commented. “We came out and they threw the yellow on me, and I’m like, ‘Oh, that was my only one.’ We bunkered down, got our head down, these Cooper tyres are hooked up, we ran away and hid. I was scared for a while there.

“We were sending it. That was the hardest we were sending. We weren’t lifting off the skybox, we weren’t lifting off that. Hope it was a good show for everyone.”

Pro 4 drivers RJ Anderson, who won the Championship Off-Road race in his class on Saturday for the second time in 2023, and Doug Mittag joined Kincaid on the podium. Kincaid added he “wouldn’t want to share (the podium) with anybody but these two up here. These are two fun guys. We had some real fun on the track and off the track.”

Scuderia Ferrari Team Principal Frédéric Vasseur was pleased with the team’s result at their home Italian Grand Prix, with Carlos Sainz securing third place and Charles Leclerc taking fourth after a tough run against Red Bull Racing.

The result allowed Ferrari to overtake Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant F1 Team for third place in the constructor’s standings. Although the team would have been vying for both drivers on the podium or potentially a win on home turf, Vasseur said that they achieved the maximum result. 

“It was a great race and the result was the best we could do today, finishing on the podium in front of our fans and bringing home 27 points which sees us get ahead of Aston Martin and close on Mercedes.”

Vasseur added that the team allowed the Ferrari duo’s thrilling battle for third to take place as they understood the importance of being on the podium in Monza, though it was made clear that they were not to “take any risks.”

“We dedicate this result to our fans who have been so supportive all weekend long and we are pleased to have put on a good show both yesterday in qualifying and today, especially at the end of the race when we let our drivers fight it out for third place.” 

After four months off, the World Rally-Raid Championship returned to action with the Desafío Ruta 40 in Argentina. As we have done all season, The Checkered Flag covered the race in extensive detail in the months leading up to and during the rally itself.

Missed any stories? Get caught up below!

Pre-race stories

Overall winners

Stage recaps

Juan Santiago Rostan arrived at the Desafío Ruta 40 to race alongside his father Santiago. He left with an oversized voucher assuring him of free registration for the 2024 Dakar Rally.

He was one of thirteen riders across the FIM-sanctioned Rally2 and independent Open Moto classes competing to win the Road to Dakar, a programme designed to reward top bike and SSV performers at each World Rally-Raid Championship round with a waived entry fee for the following year’s Dakar Rally if they have never run the race before.

Rostan finished sixth overall in Rally2, the second highest for competitors not part of the W2RC behind Diego Llanos, with a time of 19:47:59. While Rostan was never a competitor for the Rally2 title, he consistently ran in the seventh through ninth range, including overcoming a broken clutch in Stage #4 to finish seventh.

Fellow Rally2 rider Jeremías Pascual was Rostan’s biggest RtD rival as he won the Prologue and two stages, with Rostan’s two coming on days in which Pascual suffered mechanical issues that included his bike’s navigation tower breaking off in Stage #4. However, he was knocked out entirely by a crash on the final stage. Rally2’s Fabien von Thüngen moved up to second as a result, but nearly three hours back of Rostan.

Santiago Rostan Sr. also got to celebrate his own performance as he won the Open Quad class, finishing fourth among all Open Moto entries. Open Moto winner Rodrigo de Abreu Sallum finished third in the Road to Dakar.

Polesitter Carlos Sainz secured a podium for the home-favourite team Scuderia Ferrari at the Italian Grand Prix after a hard-fought battle with Red Bull Racing and a bold display of defence. 

Sainz got off the line well from pole position and was quick to cover off second-placed Max Verstappen to take the lead. This sparked lap after lap of impressive defence from Sainz, holding off the reigning World Champion until a lock-up saw him lose out on the lead on lap fifteen. 

Sergio Pérez challenged the second and third-placed Ferraris later in the race for position, and ended up pulling ahead to fill the second podium position. This left Sainz to battle wheel-to-wheel with team-mate Charles Leclerc for the final podium spot in Monza. After a nail-biting battle between the team-mates and instances of near-incidents, Sainz secured third place. 

Sainz said that achieving a podium amongst a sea of supportive Tifosi was a special moment for him, and that it was the “icing on the cake” after a strong weekend for the team. 

“It was a great weekend all along and to be able to celebrate a podium with the tifosi is the perfect icing on the cake! I really want to thank every single one of them for their endless support. They are very special!”

Christian Horner praised Max Verstappen for his record breaking tenth consecutive race victory on Sunday, but the Team Principal of Oracle Red Bull Racing acknowledged they did not have it all their own way at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza.

Verstappen started second and was made to wait to take over the lead after some defiant defending from Carlos Sainz Jr., but once in the lead he was never headed again, save for a lap or so behind the yet-to-stop Lewis Hamilton.

The second Red Bull of Sergio Pérez was also busy throughout the fifty-one-lap race, with the Mexican climbing from fifth on the grid to claim second place.  He made some good decisive overtakes on George Russell, Charles Leclerc and Sainz to do so, but was on brilliant form throughout.

“This was a very special victory but we had to do it the hard way,” said Horner.  “The Ferrari’s were very quick today, just as they have been all weekend and with Carlos and Charles defending like their life depended on it meant we had to work that extra bit harder to lead the race.

“Sergio did a brilliant job, finding his form to claim second, while Max continued his exemplary run to take the win. This now gives Max 10 victories in a row which breaks Sebastian’s record from 10 years ago. It’s a fantastic achievement and a huge effort from every single faction of the team.”

Max Verstappen was made to work hard for his record breaking tenth consecutive FIA Formula 1 World Championship race victory in Italy, but the Dutchman stayed cool and edged closer to a third Drivers’ title in a row.

Starting from second on the grid, the Oracle Red Bull Racing driver was forced to settle in behind polesitter Carlos Sainz Jr. for the opening stint of the Italian Grand Prix on Sunday, and it took until lap fifteen to make the decisive move into the second chicane after the Scuderia Ferrari driver had locked up going into turn one.

Verstappen admitted he needed to be patient to be able to pass Sainz in a car that was not as quick in a straight-line as the Ferrari, and it took time for him to force a mistake from the Spaniard.

“I had to be patient today to get the win, Ferrari had a lot of top speed all weekend and I think when you look at our rear wing we had to trim down our top flap, so our DRS the whole weekend wasn’t as effective as normal,” said Verstappen.

“That meant we could never have a good run down into turn one, so I had to be patient and force Carlos into a mistake. At one point, when his tyres were wearing a little, we tried to make him brake late, he locked up a little bit and I thought, ‘perfect’ and was able to pass him on the exit to turn two.

Max Verstappen took a record breaking tenth consecutive victory in Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix, although he was made to work hard for it during the opening stint at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza after a defiant defence from Carlos Sainz Jr.

The Oracle Red Bull Racing driver went into the race knowing another win would see him beat the record of race wins in a row previously jointly held by Alberto Ascari and Sebastian Vettel, but unlike in several of his other wins during the 2023 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season, Verstappen did not have everything his own way.

The start was initially delayed when Yuki Tsunoda broke down on the way to the grid, the Scuderia AlphaTauri driver appearing to suffer an issue with his Honda engine.  An additional formation lap was initially called, but when it became clear that it was not able to move the car without the use of a crane, the start was aborted completely and delayed by almost twenty minutes.

Scuderia Ferrari’s Sainz had started from pole position at Monza and held onto his advantage at the start, with Verstappen and the second Ferrari of Charles Leclerc falling in behind.  George Russell held onto fourth place while Sergio Pérez in the second Red Bull ran fifth ahead of Williams Racing’s Alexander Albon.

Verstappen was keeping well in touch with Sainz at the front, but with overtaking proving difficult, it took until lap fifteen, an a few aborted moves, before an overtake for the lead took place. 

While the World Rally-Raid Championship made up the bulk of the headlines at the Desafío Ruta 40, the Open classes for competitors not under FIA or FIM sanction were also filled with stories of their own.

In fact, Open racers arguably stole the show from the Prologue when the T3 of Alfredo Olmedo spun off course and rolled down a cliff. Miraculously, Olmedo and his car were able to continue the rally and even finished on the podium in Stage #3 before retiring for good the next day.

Otherwise, another T3 swept the stages as Jeremías Gonzalez Ferioli set the fastest time of all three Open Auto classes, beating his classmate Rodrigo Caballero by over an hour. Although competing in a non-FIA class, Ferioli already has experience in sanctioned competition as a longtime Dakar Rally quad rider and SSV racer, including winning a T4 stage in the 2023 edition.

Juan José Semino held off defending South American Rally Race T3.2 winner Diego Blas for the T4 win. With no prior Dakar experience, the victory earned him free registration for the 2024 Dakar Rally via the Road to Dakar programme.

In the Open Moto class, Joaquín Debeljuh proved to be the top rider on his RVM Rally, a rebadged Kove bike; Kove, which successfully completed the Dakar Rally and Sonora Rally earlier in the W2RC season, has a partnership with RVM to operate in Argentina. However, his race came undone when he crashed on the final stage and dislocated his shoulder.

The Desafío Ruta 40‘s Quad category had seven times as many entrants as the previous World Rally-Raid Championship round in Sonora four months prior, which makes it ironic that the battle for the win came down to just two riders yet again. Argentinians Manuel Andújar and Francisco Moreno split the five stages, and the former gained the upper hand with three wins en route to the overall victory.

Moreno, who is not competing for the W2RC, fell behind early as he finished eighth and seventeen minutes back in Stage #1 while Andújar drew first blood. He responded by winning the second stage, only to create a pattern of the two trading stage victories.

Entering the fifth and final day, Andújar led Moreno by 11:32 and increased the gap by another 1:35 en route to the win. The victory is a strong rebound for Andújar after being forced to retire from the Dakar Rally with a mechanical failure before a herniated disc sidelined him from riding until May, when he returned to racing in the Campeonato Argentino de Rally y Navegación (CaNav) series.

Marcelo Medeiros provided the next closest competition to the two when he set the fastest time in their class in the Prologue before joining them on the podium in all five stages. His closest shot at interfering with their duel came in Stages #3 and #5 when he finished fifty-two and fifty-one seconds behind Andújar, respectively, but ultimately placed half an hour back due to sixteen- and eighteen-minute deficits in the even-numbered legs.

Rodolfo Guillioli and Juraj Varga, the only other W2RC riders in the class, respectively placed sixth and eighth. Varga, who raced under his own banner but had support from Andújar’s 7240 Team, struggled with mechanical problems throughout the rally’s second half. In Stage #3, his Yamaha Raptor lost power before the oil hose burst as did the air hose thirty kilometres before the finish; electronic issues then plagued him on the fourth and fifth legs.

As Ardit Kurtaj prepares for his Dakar Rally début in 2024, he hopes to add a World Rally-Raid Championship to his résumé beforehand. He took a step in the right direction when he won the Rally3 category at the Desafío Ruta 40, beating Mauricio Cueva and Leo Dari.

With only three entries, the class was the smallest of the seven W2RC categories in Argentina. The same occurred at the Sonora Rally in April, the first Rally3 race of 2023, where Kurtaj finished second. He was the only rider from Sonora to also race the DR 40.

Cueva, who competed at the 2022 Rallye du Maroc with Kurtaj (though the latter was in Rally2 while Cueva remained in Rally3), set the tone early by being the only rider of the trio to set a Prologue time below nine minutes.

Kurtaj responded by winning the first two stages, the first by just forty-five seconds over Cueva before increasing it to over nineteen minutes minutes to lead by 13:55 entering Stage #3. Cueva claimed Stages #3 and #4, beating Kurtaj by a combined 12:18 to narrow the gap to seven minutes and four seconds going into the final day.

Stage #5 saw Kurtaj defeat Cueva by 4:03 to score the overall win.

Michael Docherty impressed in his return to the World Rally-Raid Championship at the Desafío Ruta 40 after missing the last two rounds due to injury, even if the final results don’t reflect it.

He won three stages in the Rally2 category, outscoring rival and BAS World KTM team-mate Bradley Cox‘s two, but was out of the overall picture in Stage #2 after shrubs yanked the fuel pump supply connector off his bike with fifty kilometres before the finish. Unable to get the bike fixed in time, he was forced to withdraw from the stage. While Rally2 riders are allowed to continue the rally after a stage retirement provided they can repair their bike (a luxury not granted for the top-level RallyGP class), bowing out of a leg results in a hefty time penalty that eliminates them from the overall.

Docherty returned to the race for the second half with a vengeance by claiming two more stage wins. He especially impressed in Stage #4 as he finished fourth among all bikes, keeping pace with eventual RallyGP champion Tosha Schareina as he did on the first day. Of course, due to his DNF, he had to settle for fifteenth overall.

With Docherty out of the picture, Konrad Dąbrowski and Romain Dumontier became Cox’s main challengers for the rest of the race but were still too far back to mount enough of a charge. Entering the final stage, Dąbrowski trailed Cox by nine minutes and forty seconds, and failed to close the gap as Cox instead won the leg to ice the victory. Despite a navigation mistake, a flurry of RallyGP penalties allowed Cox to finish Stage #5 in fifth for all riders.

The victory is Cox’s first in W2RC competition and his second at a 2023 international rally raid; his first of the latter came at the Taklimakan Rally in China in June. His overall time of 17:01:01 put him eighth in the overall bike classification.

With T4 points leader Rokas Baciuška sitting out the Desafío Ruta 40, all Shinsuke Umeda needed to do was start and finish the race to attain fifty points towards the World Rally-Raid Championship. Even if he ended up finishing last, simply completing the race earned him maximum points.

Umeda was one of just four drivers competing in Argentina in the production SSV class, and the only entry competing for the W2RC. While the smallest FIA class in the field, it was not devoid of drama as everyone but Gustavo Gallego either suffered a stage retirement or a major mid-race setback. Drivers who fail to finish a stage but are able to continue the rally are subject to substantial time penalties that eliminate them from overall contention.

Gallego and Enrico Gaspari avoided retiring from stages and therefore comprised the top two overall. Still, the margin of victory was over four hours as a mechanical issue in Stage #2 caused Gaspari to fall two hours behind, and another failure occurred in the final ten kilometres of Stage #5 that led to him finishing forty-eight minutes back.

Although he is not racing for points, Gallego still notched his first international rally raid victory in an SSV. The 2017 Argentine Cross-Country Rally Champion previously ran the Dakar Rally on a quad and finished third overall in the 2019 edition. Incidentally, that year’s Dakar Quad winner Nicolás Cavigliasso also competed in an SSV at the DR 40, albeit in the T3 class and showed speed despite being hampered by mechanical problems.

Eduard Pons was the top driver in the first half as he won the Prologue and opening pair of stages, only for his overall hopes to end by retiring with a broken tie rod just forty-three kilometres into Stage #3. He recovered by winning Stage #4 and a recorded a second-place finish to Gallego on the last day. His final time of 38:07:25 was over nineteen and a half hours behind Gallego.

A week before heading to Argentina for the Desafío Ruta 40, Mitch Guthrie finished second to Red Bull team-mate Seth Quintero among UTVs at the Vegas to Reno. Two weeks after that night in Nevada, Guthrie was the one atop a UTV podium.

Trading in his V2R Polaris for his World Rally-Raid Championship MCE-5 T3M, Guthrie scored two stage wins in the Desafío Ruta 40‘s T3 category but his reliability and consistency proved key to the overall victory. With the exception of a seventh in Stage #5 after racing conservatively, he finished on the podium in each of the first four legs and won the first and third, allowing him to retain the overall lead every day.

The win is Guthrie’s second straight after claiming the Sonora Rally in April.

“It was a great rally,” Guthrie stated. “We had our ups and downs for sure, but we kept it together all the way. We’re stoked with the overall win, that’s two in a row now. It was my first time racing here so we were learning a lot as we went.”

Mattias Ekström and Quintero provided the biggest challenges to Guthrie’s reign, the former also winning the Prologue and Stage #2, but were set back by mechanical failures. Ekström was knocked out of overall contention just a day after his stage win with a broken differential, while Quintero’s intercooler failed the following stage. Both still reached the finish, albeit in tenth and eleventh.

While not part of the factory team nor racing for World Rally-Raid Championship points, Tosha Schareina‘s move from KTM to Honda has been a smashing success so far. After finishing runner-up in his début with the Japanese manufacturer in Sonora, he was easily the top rider at the Desafío Ruta 40 in Argentina.

After finishing fifth in the Prologue, Schareina was virtually perfect as he won the first three stages. Argentina’s Luciano Benavides was the only reason he did not simply cruise to the overall win, having finished second to him in all three legs.

Not willing to let the Spaniard crash his homecoming, Benavides caught the leader in Stage #4 and averted a sweep as he edged out Schareina for the stage win by thirty-six seconds. Benavides was the only competitor with a feasible chance at overtaking Schareina for the overall entering the final day, but the gap between the top two and everyone else meant Benavides had all but secured the W2RC victory as the highest-running championship rider, which awards the standard max points even if one does not win the rally overall.

With this in mind, Benavides and Schareina elected to ride conservatively for the final stage. Both ironically received speeding penalties, though it did not affect their stage or overall finish as Schareina still won with eleven minutes on Benavides. The victory is Schareina’s second with Honda after the Baja España Aragón in his home country in July.

Honda factory rider Ricky Brabec joined them on the overall podium while Ross Branch got the final step for the W2RC top three. Despite winning the final stage (albeit inherited due to penalties), Adrien Van Beveren just missed out on the latter by two minutes.