The 2026 Dakar Rally continued today with Stage 2 from Yanbu to Alula and Buggyra ZM Racing was able improve compared to yesterday.
-- Despite steering issues and almost an hour lost in the service zone, Aliyyah Koloc and navigator Marcin Pasek showed good pace and made it to the finish in 58th position. Martin Koloc and his navigator Mirko Brun, however, had continued technical issues. As a wheel failure cost them significant time, and as the issues persisted, they decided to continue from the 143-kilometre control point to the bivouac via the road section.
Based on split times, Aliyyah held a solid pace in the first part of the stage and stayed close to the competition until necessary work cost her significant time at the pit stop. Nevertheless, the crew was able to carry on and completed Stage 2 without further incidents. “Unfortunately, at around kilometre 115, we lost power steering, and it started leaking again. We then drove about 35 kilometres without power steering, which was very, very demanding,” Aliyyah Koloc explained. “We had to go really slowly and we were already quite exhausted, but we managed to reach the service area where we decided to replace the power steering as we still had another 250 kilometres to go.
The repair took almost an hour, but thanks to this repair work the rest of the stage was fine, and we could really push. Overall, it was a pretty good day, but unfortunately, we didn’t achieve the result we wanted due to these issues. Hopefully tomorrow will be better,” she concluded.
Martin Koloc described the stage as eventful, but also painful. “From kilometre 30, we were driving without power steering. I drove over a rock and the wheel came off, so we knew we had a problem with the front suspension arms. “We have prototype spare parts with us which we’ll start testing. We want to log in as many kilometres as possible, train and test,” said Koloc.
Soltys seventh in the second stage, Posledni delayed by turbo repair
Dakar Rally 2026 continued on Monday with Stage 2 from Yanbu to Alula, and Buggyra ZM Racing’s truck crews seemed to hand over the baton of technical troubles from one to the other. Martin Soltys, together with Vlastimil Miksch and Tomas Sikola, fought their way from the back of the starting order up to seventh place in today’s stage. Karel Posledni, with Petr Schweiner and Filip Skrobanek, had the stage going well, but was slowed by similar technical issues to those Soltys faced yesterday – at kilometre 199 they had to deal with a turbo problem and lost around two hours on the spot. Despite the major delay, they eventually reached the finish and were classified 21st for the stage.
“Unfortunately, we broke one wheel at kilometre 15, which was a huge disappointment. On top of that we stopped in a bad place and had to jack the truck up very high, which took a lot out of us, and the next roughly 150 kilometres were full of dust – we overtook a lot of vehicles and the track was pretty much hell,” said Martin Soltys. “But the last 200 kilometres were a joy to drive. There were fewer vehicles, even though we were still overtaking and it was still very dusty. Still, we finally got to drive properly, found our rhythm and I’m happy to be seventh. That means we’ll start somewhere near the front tomorrow, which I’m glad about, because I was worried it might take us several days to get back to the leading positions,” he added.
Karel Posledni was pleased with the opening part of the stage, when the driving was great. “Then we had a tyre blowout, so we changed it and continued at race pace. Another puncture came before the neutralisation, we only kept inflating the tyre, and at the pit stop the guys changed it for us,” said Posledni before delivering more bad news. “Then, still before the neutralisation, the turbo failed. We repaired it for about two hours, maybe even more, and then we set off again and prayed for that one remaining spare tyre. Luckily we’re here. We’re looking forward to tomorrow. We don’t even know our time loss or our position, but we made it to the finish,” Posledni concluded.
Dakar continues on Tuesday with Stage 3, Alula–Alula, featuring a 422-kilometre special and 314 kilometres of liaisons (736 km in total).
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