Nicolas Cavigliasso wins Baja Morocco ahead of Rallye du Maroc

Nicolás Cavigliasso will need all the help he can get if he wants to sneak by Rokas Baciuška for the World Rally-Raid Championship in the Challenger class. This includes familiarising himself with the Moroccan desert in advance.

A week before the W2RC’s season-ending Rallye du Maroc, Cavigliasso showed up to Merzouga to compete in the Baja Morocco. He battled with fellow Taurus T3 Max driver Gonçalo Guerreiro, taking the early lead before Guerreiro briefly held it at Stage #3, then securing it the next day and pulling away.

While the race is an amateur rally not under FIA sanction, it provides him with additional track time before the Rallye du Maroc. His chances of passing Baciuška for the title are rather slim as he is 44 points back, but he remains mathematically in contention. His navigator and wife Valentina Pertegarini currently leads the co-drivers’ standings, and has a 35-point advantage on Carlos Sachs; Baciuška’s co-driver Oriol Vidal trails Pertegarini by five but is not racing Morocco due to injury.

With Baja Morocco out of the way, BBR Motorsport will now focus on getting the Taurus prepared for the Rallye du Maroc. The team is also testing the 2025 Taurus ahead of its début at the Dakar Rally.

“Even though there’s a lot of sand in Morocco, there are also a lot of rocks, so the wear and tear is greater here,” said Cavigliasso. “It’s kind of like the terrain in Argentina. We’re also all working on the cables and connectors, cleaning everything so that everything is in better condition.

“The goal is to win because we want to win in Morocco for what’s coming, so we’re going all in.”

Guerreiro, a star in the Portuguese Cross-Country Championship, settled for second in his maiden desert rally and first race in a Taurus. He described the event as the “most challenging thing I have done in my life.”

Fellow Portuguese driver Maria Luís Gameiro finished sixteenth in her own desert début. She is the first woman driver to complete the Baja Morocco.

The race was held in collaboration with the Defender Rally Series, which included a separate category for the Bowler Defender. Dave Beecroft was the highest finisher in the class in twenty-second ahead of his brother Dan.

“It was a pleasure to witness the achievements of all our driver teams throughout this event,” said Bowler Motorsport general manager Calum McKechnie. “My thanks go to everyone who made the Masterclass and race event such a special and unique experience, and congratulations go to the Beecrofts for a remarkable result in their first desert rally.”

Hugues Lacam, who won the Baja Morocco’s sister race Carta Rallye in the spring, finished twenty-third.

On the bike side, Xavier Flick and his Kove 450 Rally won for the second year in a row. Ten bikes were entered as Flick was joined by Eric Bernard, Pierre Alexandre Bolf, Guillaume Borne, Charles Edouard Cairel, Damien Derocq, Jens Fritzsch, Amnay Hajji, Jeremy Poncet, and Gauthier Poudevigne. All but Bernard were entered on traditional 450cc bikes, with the exception on a KTM 890 adventure bike that he plans to run in the 2025 Africa Eco Race.

Baja Morocco took place just a week after historic flooding, which forced organisers to tweak the route accordingly.

Overall results