Nasser Al-Attiyah has officially lost his World Rally-Raid Championship title to Lucas Moraes, with an appeal into the result of Rallye du Moroc formally rejected.
Dacia driver Al-Attiyah, who won all three of the previous W2RC titles with Toyota, would have finished third in Morocco and retained his championship but for a 1hr10min penalty he earned for driving past the final stop sign at full speed.
A stewards report noted that Al-Attiyah and navigator Fabian Lurquin came to a stop just in front of the media zone, and tried to explain “they hadn’t seen the [stop] sign because of the dust”. However “the onboard footage clearly shows that the driver and co-driver were engaged in a heated discussion, causing them to be so distracted that they didn’t realize they had passed the stop sign”.
Moraes, who finished second to Dacia’s Sébastien Loeb, is therefore the new W2RC champion – retaining Toyota’s unbeaten record of both drivers’ and manufacturers’ titles since the rally-raid world championship was created back in 2022.
Lucas Moraes won his first W2RC event in Portugal and became world champion in Morocco
Talking to Belgian publication Belga, Lurquin said there is “no problem” between himself and Al-Attiyah. Rallye du Moroc was just their second event together after Loeb and Al-Attiyah swapped navigators. Édouard Boulanger claimed the navigators’ title for his efforts.
Lurquin said: “In the excitement, we didn’t see the checkered flags. We were talking about an error in the road book 5km before the finish, and the first three riders got lost because of it. We didn’t see the stop sign because we were too stressed after this strange rally. No, there’s no problem between us.”
The W2RC resumes on January 3-17 with the 2026 Dakar Rally, but Al-Attiyah’s next world championship appearance will be next month’s World Rally Championship finale in Saudi Arabia.
There he’ll drive an M-Sport Ford Puma Rally1 alongside co-driver Cándido Carrera.
