Hero MotoSports Team Rally Achieves Double Top-10 Finish at Dakar Rally 2026
Nacho Cornejo and Ross Branch finished 7th and 8th overall in the Dakar Rally 2026, giving Hero MotoSports its first double top-10 finish.
- 7th place (Nacho Cornejo)
- 8th place (Ross Branch)
- 14 (Cornejo), 12 (Branch)
What Happened
Hero MotoSports Team Rally completed the 48th edition of the Dakar Rally 2026 with riders Nacho Cornejo and Ross Branch finishing inside the overall top 10. The rally, spread across 13 stages in the Arabian Desert, covered nearly 8,000 kilometres with nearly 5,000 kilometres of timed stages. The Hero 450 Rally bike completed the entire rally without a single technical issue.
Nearly 8,000 kmkm
nearly 5,000 km of timed stages
“Dakar 2026 is done and dusted, and we are safely at the finish in Yanbu after an intense rally filled with challenges, highs, and lows. What matters most is that every single person in this team gave 100 percent from start to finish and fought relentlessly for the result. This year marks a historic milestone for Hero MotoSports, with two riders finishing inside the top ten for the first time—seven”
Why this matters
This milestone demonstrates Hero MotoCorp's engineering reliability and team consistency on the world's toughest rally, earning valuable championship points for the season.
Terms in This Story
- Rally GP
- The premier category of the Dakar Rally for professional riders.
- Rally2
- The second-tier category of the Dakar Rally for amateur or less experienced riders.
- Marathon-refuge stage
- A stage where riders must camp overnight in the desert without mechanical support.
Summarised from the linked release; details can be imperfect — always verify against the original source.