Rally Dakar 2026 continued on Tuesday with Stage 3 (Alula–Alula). Both Buggyra ZM Racing truck crews made it to the finish, but with very different outcomes.
-- Martin Soltys, together with Vlastimil Miksch and Tomas Sikola, kept a steady pace from the start and were classified 6th at the finish. Karel Posledni, Petr Schweiner and Filip Skrobanek lost significant time during the day and, with almost a three-hour deficit, finished 20th.
Martin Soltys commented on how demanding the stage was: “Yesterday we thought it was a tough stage, but today it was even tougher, and we’re glad to be in the finish. Or rather, I’m glad we’re in the finish, because I’ve really had enough,” said Soltys. “We had one puncture, otherwise there were no further issues, but the track was badly broken up. Rocks everywhere, rough sections, lots of bouncing – it was really demanding. Now we’re just looking forward to tomorrow,” he concluded.
Soltys’ crew – Vlastimil Miksch and Tomas Sikola – agreed the stage was extremely tough. “Rocks, rocks, pain – you’re driving in a quarry. Technical trial sections, in some places you can barely get through, it hurt. Navigation was difficult too, because after the recent rains the riverbeds are washed out and there are no tracks to follow. At times we got lost, we had to drop the truck down two-metre ledges, but then it started to come together,” Miksch summed up. Sikola added that in his nine Dakars it was one of the hardest stages: “A massive rock face we had to jump down – absolute madness. The hits to the ribs really hurt. Martin was groaning like he was in a delivery room, so I kept telling him: breathe, breathe,” the mechanic Sikola recalled.
“Stage 3 was the best I’ve experienced so far. We were driving, then we met Aliyyah, so we hooked her up, rolled over onto our side, started burning – what else could one wish for? The car we had on the tow rope held us, so we landed like on a pillow, and the truck’s fine,” Karel Posledni joked with exaggeration. Navigator Petr Schweiner added that the final, supposedly more navigation-heavy section was genuinely difficult in the dark and dust: “I hit rock bottom there – we were following tracks that didn’t match the roadbook, arguing about what to trust… but in the end we made it here,” he said with relief.
Rally Dakar continues on Wednesday with the fourth day, the so-called Marathon Stage (Alula–Alula). Crews will face 417 kilometres of special stage and only 75 kilometres of liaison (total 492 km). The Marathon Stage is a two-day section where crews are not allowed to receive mechanical assistance from their own service teams between the two parts – putting even more emphasis on reliability and the crew’s ability to repair the truck themselves at the marathon bivouac.
Aliyyah and Martin Koloc experience mixed results on Stage 3 of the Dakar Rally
Stage 3 of the 2025 Dakar Rally, a loop around AlUla, saw contrasting results for Buggyra ZM Racing and the Kolocs. While Martin Koloc and co-driver Mirko Brun completed the stage in 62nd position, Aliyyah Koloc and navigator Marcin Pasek had to retire halfway through the stage due to technical difficulties.
Martin Koloc and Mirko Brun finished Stage 3 in 62nd place after completing the full distance. "I think it was a good stage. It was fast and technical, sometimes on the edge, but it went well for us," said Martin. The crew encountered some technical issues in the final 100 kilometers of the stage, which cost them time. "In the last hundred kilometers, we had two punctures and consequently lost some time there," he added. Martin also set a clear goal for the remainder of the rally: "For me, I want to enjoy the rest of Dakar. We'll train and rack up kilometres."
Aliyyah Koloc had to retire from Stage 3. . “ Just like in the first stage, we didn’t finish again today. We had a clutch problem,” said Aliyyah. She added that the start of the stage looked promising: “The first 140 kilometres were fine, but there was a lot of dust because, after yesterday’s issues, we started far behind the others.” Aliyyah Koloc acknowledged that it has been a challenging start to the event: “It’s the third day in a row we’ve had problems which is pretty unlucky.”
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