In just the second stage of his first Dakar Rally, American Seth Quintero can call himself a stage winner after topping the T3 lightweight prototype class in Monday’s excursion from Bisha to Wadi Ad-Dawasir. The Red Bull Off-Road Team USA driver got his Overdrive Racing OT3 to the finish in 5:15:41, just over two minutes ahead of teammate Cristina Guiterrez Herrero.
In a Dakar Rally where the Red Bull squad already made history with Gutierrez Herrero’s win yesterday, making her the first woman to win a stage since Jutta Kleinschmidt, Quintero’s victory is another for the record books. The 18-year-old Quintero is now the youngest stage winner in Dakar history, as he cracked the overall top 10 on stage for the second day in a row.
Saudi Arabia’s own Saleh Alsaif was the overall winner in the SSV class with a time of 5:05:07. Gerard Farres Guell was second on the day at 5:06:47, while Chaleco Lopez finished third at 5:07:50 to take the overall lead from American Austin Jones, who was ninth on the day and fell to fifth in the overall T4 standings.
Lopez’s lead is now 39 seconds over Monster Energy Can-Am’s Aron Domzala, as Can-Am vehicles dominate the combined T3 and T4 top 10 with eight entries. The only exceptions are the top two T3 vehicles, as Stage 1 winner Cristina Guiterrez Herrero and Quintero are fourth and 10th, respectively, in their OT3s.
Behind Quintero and Jones, it’s been an up-and-down event so far for the other Americans taking part in this year’s Dakar. The factory Polaris RZR duo of Kristen and Wayne Matlock were among the top racers in T4 on Sunday, but Kristen suffered major damage in the dunes and is being towed into the bivouac. In the T3 class, Mitch Guthrie struggled on Sunday to finish more than four hours off the pace, but showed his true pace on Monday by finishing third in class.
Tuesday’s loop stage starts and finishes at Wadi Ad-Dawasir, featuring 403 kilometers of special stage compared to 477 in last year’s loop. Guthrie was the winner of this slightly longer stage last year, although it fell in the second half of the rally as opposed to the first. TV coverage of the 2021 Dakar Rally airs all week starting at 6PM ET/3PM PT on the NBC Sports Network.
2021 Dakar Rally Stage 2 Winners
- Lightweight Prototype: Seth Quintero, 5:15:41
- SSV: Saleh Alsaif, 5:05:07
2021 Dakar Rally Overall Rankings
| Class | T3 (Lightweight Prototype) | T4 (SSV) |
| 1st | Cristina Gutierrez Herrero, 9:01:00 | Chaleco Lopez, 8:58:13 |
| 2nd | Seth Quintero, +17:33 | Aron Domzala, +0:39 |
| 3rd | Mattias Ekstrom, +42:15 | Gerard Farres Guell, +1:01 |
| 4th | Jean-Luc Pisson, +46:38) | Reinaldo Varela, +4:09 |
| 5th | Josef Machacek, +1:14:39 | Austin Jones, +6:50 |
