Defender Rally will bring its debut FIA World Rally-Raid Championship campaign to a close at Rallye du Maroc, with one of the team’s driver and co-driver pairings set to be crowned 2026 Stock class champions.
Rokas Baciuška arrives in Morocco leading the Stock Drivers’ Championship with 199 points, 29 clear of teammate Stéphane Peterhansel on 170, while Sara Price sits third on 164 points. The FIA standings confirm Defender currently occupies the top three positions in the category.
Morocco will be Defender Rally’s final competitive appearance of 2026 after the team confirmed it will not contest the season-ending Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge. The decision does not mark an end to the programme, with 2026 being the first year of Defender’s planned three-year W2RC campaign.
“Defender Rally is fully focused on Rallye du Maroc, which will be the team’s last competitive outing of the 2026 FIA World Rally Raid Championship,” Team Principal Ian James said.
“It’s already been a fantastic first year of W2RC competition for Defender Rally, and we’re looking forward to fighting hard in Morocco where one of our driver and co-driver pairings will be crowned Champions of the Stock class.
“We’ll then immediately turn our attention to preparations for the 2027 W2RC season.”
Three rounds, three Stock victories
Defender heads into Morocco having won the Stock class at each of the first three rounds of its debut W2RC campaign.
The programme announced its arrival at January’s Dakar Rally when Baciuška and co-driver Oriol Vidal won the Stock category on Defender’s first attempt.
The pair completed the Dakar in 58 hours, nine minutes and 45 seconds, while Price and Sean Berriman made it a Defender one-two by finishing second. Peterhansel and Michael Metge finished fourth in class.
Defender’s three crews also recorded a 1-2-3 result on 10 of the Dakar’s 13 stages.
When the championship moved to Europe for the BP Ultimate Rally-Raid Portugal, it was 14-time Dakar winner Peterhansel who took his turn at the top.
Peterhansel and Metge won the Stock category in 11 hours, 57 minutes and 33 seconds, finishing two minutes and 29 seconds ahead of Baciuška and Vidal.
Price and Berriman completed a clean sweep of the Stock podium for Defender in third.
Peterhansel strikes again in Argentina
Peterhansel and Metge carried that form into the Desafío Ruta 40 in Argentina, claiming their second consecutive Stock victory.
The pair completed the event in 18 hours, 11 minutes and 12 seconds, beating Baciuška and Vidal by nine minutes and 18 seconds.
Price, partnered by Saydiie Gray for the event, completed another all-Defender Stock podium in third.
Price and Gray also made history as the first all-female crew to compete in the Desafío Ruta 40 and went on to claim a stage victory during the event.
Despite Peterhansel’s back-to-back victories in Portugal and Argentina, Baciuška’s consistency has allowed him to retain the championship lead heading into Morocco.
The 26-year-old Lithuanian leads Peterhansel by 29 points with Price a further six points behind.
Defender takes title fight to Africa
Rallye du Maroc marks Defender Rally’s competitive debut in Africa and the fourth round of the 2026 World Rally-Raid Championship.
The FIA’s latest event information lists a route of approximately 2,524km, including around 1,575km of competitive selective sections, although those figures remain subject to final route checks.
Beginning in Agadir and finishing in Zagora, the event will be contested across five desert selective sections.
Defender will again enter three D7X-Rs in the Stock category.
Peterhansel and Metge will race alongside championship leaders Baciuška and Vidal, while Price is reunited with Sean Berriman, her navigator from the Dakar Rally and Rally-Raid Portugal.
For Peterhansel, Morocco is familiar territory.
The Frenchman has won Rallye du Maroc three times in cars and arrives second in the Stock championship following his victories in Portugal and Argentina.
“I’m looking forward to it, because for me, the Rallye du Maroc is the best rally-raid event,” Peterhansel said.
“It’s where it all began in Africa, and you find every type of terrain. I love racing here, especially since we’ve been able to develop the car over the past year across the championship’s varied terrains. It’s becoming increasingly fun to drive.”
Production roots remain
Defender’s championship challenge has been mounted with the Dakar D7X-R, which competes in the Stock category for production-based vehicles.
The competition car is derived from the Defender OCTA and retains the D7x body architecture, based around a lightweight aluminium monocoque construction.
Power comes from the 4.4-litre twin-turbo V8 found in the Defender OCTA.
The competition programme followed Defender becoming the Dakar Rally’s official car partner in 2025, with that partnership set to continue through 2028.
One final fight before 2027
While Rallye du Maroc is the penultimate round of the wider 2026 World Rally-Raid Championship, it will be Defender Rally’s final competitive outing of the season.
The FIA championship continues with the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge, but Defender has confirmed it will not enter that event.
That puts the focus firmly on Morocco as Baciuška, Peterhansel and Price prepare for one final fight in what has already been a successful debut season for the Defender programme.
Baciuška enters with a 29-point advantage, but Peterhansel arrives having won the previous two rounds in Portugal and Argentina, while Price remains third in the standings.
Whatever the order when Defender’s 2026 campaign concludes, the team says one of its driver and co-driver pairings will leave Morocco as Stock class champions before attention turns to the second year of its three-year W2RC programme in 2027.
