Fenix Rally 2026: Knuiman wins the dunes, Thijs extends lead

The 2026 Fenix Rally, run in Tunisia from 23 to 31 October, had its first big dune day. On a 336 km loop around Douz, Jeremy Knuiman won the bikes, Vincent Thijs and Arjan van Tiel took a second straight stage win in the cars and Pierre Lafay dominated the SSVs again. These results are provisional and unofficial: the stewards can still change them.

Bikes: Knuiman takes time out of Gerlach

Knuiman finished in 06:15:43, 2:08 ahead of Justin Gerlach. The German nevertheless stays overall leader, 3:54 clear. In the toughest dune section, between kilometre 60 and kilometre 136, Daan Veenendaal and Gaspard Delsart were quickest; on the faster tracks after the second service, though, Knuiman and Gerlach took more than twenty minutes back from them.

• Veenendaal is third on the stage at 24:39, including a 2:00 penalty for a missed waypoint, and third overall at 30:14.
• Delsart, with the same penalty, is fourth.
• Florian Willer was the big loser: classified with the maximum time and penalised 27:40 for speeding and six missed waypoints, he fell from fifth to fifteenth.
• In the quads, Adam Krysiak won by almost half an hour over Karol Slugocki and leads by 35:51.

Cars: Thijs and Van Tiel win again after a hard day

Opening the road after winning the day before, Thijs and Van Tiel lost time, then got stuck on a clump of camel grass that damaged the front right of their car. Repaired on the spot, it still won the stage in 05:57:26. Vincent Vroninks and Dave Berghmans finished 43 seconds back and move up to second overall, at 20:33.

Belgians Koen Wauters and Tom De Leeuw (Toyota Hilux) were third on the stage at 25:53 and third overall, despite two punctures and getting stuck on a dune. They also towed team-mate Pascal Feryn about thirty kilometres: according to RallyandRaces, the alternator belt on his Hilux had failed. Feryn and Kurt Keysers were classified with the maximum time and drop to eighth.

Magdalena Zajac and Blazej Czekan were more than twenty minutes quicker than Thijs between kilometres 60 and 136, then lost almost an hour on the final section for an unknown reason: they are fourth at 30:19. Four of the thirteen cars that started did not finish.

SSVs: Lafay pulls away, Lacam out

Lafay and co-driver Loïc Minaudier (Can-Am Maverick R) won by 11:01 over Nicolas Martinez and Lili Delfino (Overdrive OT3). Hugues Lacam, second after stage 1, did not reach the finish; the cause has not been made public. Lafay leads overall by 20:03. Of the 45 SSVs that started, 13 are classified as retired.

Stage 3: the longest

Retirements receive the maximum time of 10:20:00. In the morning the organisers had already asked crews to drive with lights on in the dust. Stage 3, scheduled for Tuesday, was another loop around Douz: 564 km, 405 of them against the clock, with a liaison of more than 146 km back.