Spanish co-driver Oriol Vidal has been crowned 2026 W2RC Stock co-driver champion alongside Lithuanian driver Rokas Baciuška. The Defender Rally crew finished the season on 233 points after winning the Dakar, taking two second places in Portugal and Argentina, and ending the year with a third-place finish in Morocco.
Some titles are won through outright speed. Others are built stage by stage, without making too much noise. The championship won by Oriol Vidal and Rokas Baciuška clearly belongs to the second group.
In rally-raid, being fast helps, but it is never enough. You need to navigate well, protect the car, know when to attack and, above all, make it to the finish every day. That is exactly where this crew made the difference throughout the season.
For Spanish rally-raid fans, Oriol Vidal deserves special attention.
The driver usually gets most of the spotlight, but in rally-raid the co-driver can decide a race in a matter of seconds. One navigation mistake can undo hours of work, while a precise roadbook call can save a difficult stage.
Defender Rally has highlighted Vidal’s navigation accuracy as one of the key factors behind Baciuška’s season. The crew finished the championship on 233 points, enough to secure the FIA W2RC Stock drivers’ and co-drivers’ titles.
The toughest part of this season was having our main rivals inside our own team while leading the championship from the start. We had to manage the pace and our decisions very carefully throughout the year, and that probably forced us to approach the races with much more discipline. When you leave the Dakar as championship leader, especially because it is the event that awards the most points in a relatively short season, you know the rest of the year is about managing that advantage. You start to feel that the title is within reach and, fortunately, we handled it well and were able to take the championship. I cannot say much about my future yet, but I can say that I will keep the same motivation. The goal remains to keep improving and to continue the momentum we have built this season.
It was no coincidence. When a crew can maintain that level of consistency throughout an entire championship, there is usually much more behind it than outright speed alone.
The season could hardly have started better. Rokas Baciuška and Oriol Vidal won the 2026 Dakar in the Stock category, in the competitive debut of the Defender Dakar D7X-R.
That victory gave them the perfect foundation for a World Championship challenge. But the Dakar was not an isolated result.
They then claimed two consecutive second-place finishes, at the bp Ultimate Rally-Raid Portugal and the Desafío Ruta 40 in Argentina. In Morocco, the final event of their season, they finished third in Stock.
They did not win every race. And that is precisely one of the keys to this championship.
In rally-raid, the title is often not won by the crew that dominates the most stages, but by the one that makes the fewest mistakes. Baciuška and Vidal understood that perfectly.
After the Dakar, their approach was to manage the championship, maintain a strong pace and avoid unnecessary risks. That may look less spectacular from the outside, but it is one of the hardest things to do in rally-raid.
Knowing when to back off is also part of winning. And when you arrive in Morocco with the championship still on the line, every kilometre carries much more weight.
The Rallye du Maroc brought Defender Rally’s 2026 season to a close.
Stéphane Peterhansel and Mika Metge won the Stock category in Morocco, while Baciuška and Vidal finished third, a result that was enough to secure the championship.
The Spanish-Lithuanian crew ended the season with 233 points.
The final margin may look small, but in a championship like this every result collected throughout the season carries real weight.
The title also carries special significance for Defender. The brand has won the W2RC Stock manufacturers’ championship in its first full season in the category.
The Defender Dakar D7X-R is based on the Defender OCTA and retains a number of elements derived from the production vehicle.
For a manufacturer making its official debut in competition, ending the first season with the drivers’, co-drivers’ and manufacturers’ titles is hard to improve on. It also puts the project in a very different position looking ahead.
From the outside, we often see only the final classification. 233 points. First place. Champions. But behind those numbers are months of navigation, long stages, nights studying roadbooks, pressure inside the car and thousands of kilometres where one small mistake can change everything.
For me, that is the most interesting part of this title. Oriol Vidal was not simply the co-driver sitting next to the champion. He played a direct role in building this championship.
And in a discipline where navigation remains one of the key factors that can make the difference, that matters enormously.
The 2026 W2RC Stock title puts Vidal among the Spanish names who have reached the highest level of world rally-raid.
After winning the Dakar and the W2RC Stock title in their first season, the pressure will be different. The question is no longer whether the project can win.
The question now is how much further it can go. And for Oriol Vidal, after a season like this, the next challenge will be to defend what he has just achieved.
Getting to the top is difficult. Staying there is usually even harder.
