American’s Ricky Brabec and Skyler Howes completed in second and third in todays stage of the Dakar rally, capping off a superb day for Monster Energy Honda HRC on the opening leg of the marathon stage. Another American, Preston Campbell has seized the lead of the Rally2 class at this year’s Dakar Rally as the unpredictable nature of the event threw up a host of challenges today.

With no mechanical assistance available once they reached the bivouac, Campbell had to strike a delicate balance: maintain pace while managing risk to protect his lead position. Campbell, on his Dakar debut, had already impressed with a solid third-place finish yesterday. Today, he repeated the feat on his Honda CRF450RX RALLY, putting him firmly at the front of the Rally2 class overall with a commanding lead of nearly nineteen minutes.His consistency makes him a serious contender to watch in 2026.

Brabec was also in excellent form and following his duel with Schareina yesterday, the pair were locked in another intense battle across the 417 km special.Catching his teammate around the 200 km mark, the Californian also benefited from bonus time for his second-place finish.After 16 hours, 45 minutes and 40 seconds of racing, the two riders are unbelievably locked together on time at the very front.

Despite feeling under the weather, Skyler Howes continued to build momentum and showed why he remains a serious contender.Finishing third, just ten seconds behind his Monster Energy Honda HRC teammates, his relentless preparation clearly paid off.Although currently seventh overall, Howes has closed the gap to the riders fighting for the final podium positions.However, concerns over tyre wear at the marathon camp mean he’ll be hoping his rubber holds up over tomorrow’s punishing, stony stage to Hail.

Ricky Brabec: It was a long stage. I started second today behind my teammate, Tosha. He did an excellent job opening. I started out a little bit slow today, but fortunately I found the pace and picked it up a little bit. I caught up to Tosha and me and him kind of navigated the last 200 km together, it was cool. It was a fun time. I think we’re both in a really good position, I think we’re both happy on the day. The terrain with the navigation was tricky because we were on these big slab that had no track on it and you just really had to follow the CAP heading and trust yourself to make it to the end of the slab and hopefully there’s a road there. It got tricky a couple of times and I got off track early on and just had to compensate the CAP heading and kind of go off piste. I got super lucky two times and the waypoint opened, so after that I slowed down a little bit and just made sure I was navigating. I caught Tosha before refuelling so we navigated together a lot today and it was cool, you know, we had fun and I think we did an excellent job. The bike didn’t touch the ground today, I’ve just got to check over the tyres, but I think for the moment the bike is perfectly fine.

Skyler Howes: A tough day. I probably caught a chill from the air conditioning and my energy was at its lowest today. I tried to look after my tyres because we knew there could be issues, and I think I have a problem with one of them. We'll see how it goes tomorrow with my rear tyre. I think the challenge will be about who can make it across the finish line with their tyres. I believe mine is not in very good condition. So it’s going to be interesting to see how tomorrow goes. If my tyre fails that’ll be the end of it, so hopefully we can make it through tomorrow. Tonight we’re going to sleep out in a tent and hopefully I can get some good rest, I’m going to need it. I feel pretty drained right now. Overall, the stage went good for me, a couple of little turnarounds out there, but this one was a long and demanding one. This is the Dakar, it’s always been pretty difficult but the last couple of years, this first week has been really challenging.

Preston Campbell: I will try to go as fast I can tomorrow but with some caution in mind, if I get a gap it will be awesome. It was a really good day, tough, long and feeling good for tomorrow.