Lucas Moraes grabbed his first Dakar stage victory on Monday as Yazeed Al-Rajhi finished third to take the overall lead in the car class.
In the bikes, Kevin Benavides claimed victories as a host of his rivals were penalised for speeding and two-time winner Sam Sunderland was knocked out of the race by mechanical problem ended his interest in this year's edition, organisers said.
Moraes, a Brazilian Toyota driver won the 438km third stage by just nine seconds from Swede Mattias Ekstrom in an Audi.
Saudi Arabian Al-Rajhi (Toyota) was third at 1 minute 9 seconds but even he got lost.
"Navigating was pretty hard today," he said. "We had to backtrack several times. But we made it here."
Moraes thanked his co-driver Armand Monleon for guiding him through the dunes.
"I have to give it up to Armand because the navigation was very tricky and he was on point on everything," said Moraes who had time to help Toyota teammate Seth Quintero.
"We had a good pace and didn't have any punctures. We even stopped to help Seth – we gave our spare wheel to him so he could finish as well. It was a perfect day."
Quintero, 21, came in 17th on the day and the American now sits 11th in the provisional rankings 27min 18sec behind leader Al-Rajhi who is 29 seconds ahead of Carlos Sainz (Audi).
The Spaniard finished sixth on stage 3, 3min 29sec behind Moraes.
Frenchman Sebastien Loeb (Prodrive), who started the day in third, suffered three punctures on the rocky roads from Al Duwadimi to Al Samiya.
Loeb said he ran out of spare tyres as he lost almost 24 minutes and dropped to ninth.
"The third came with 100 kilometres to go," he said.
"After the third one we had to repair. We lost a lot of time repairing the tyre and inflating it again.
"Then we had to stop every 20 kilometres because it was losing air.
"Sometimes you have punctures driving slowly, sometimes you go fast and you have no punctures. It’s difficult to understand really."
BENAVIDES PROMOTED
Argentine Benavides on a KTM was third across the finish line but was promoted to first after Chile's Pablo Quintanilla (Honda) and second-placed Spaniard Joan Barreda (Honda) were among riders caught speeding.
Quintanilla was hit with a six-minute penalty
Botswana's Ross Branch (Hero), winner on Saturday, retained first place overall, ahead of Sunday's winner Chilean Ignacio Cornejo (Honda).
Sunderland, who won the race in 2017 and 2022, saw his dreams of a third crown go up in smoke as a mechanical problem ended his race.
The 34-year-old Briton, who was riding for the Spanish team GasGas, came to a halt after just 11 kilometres.
Sixth overall after Sunday's second stage, Sunderland gave up after waiting for more than three hours hoping a vehicle would bring him oil.
On Tuesday, the terrain will be rolling for Stage 4, but navigation promises to be tricky on a long drive - 631km with 299km of special stages - between Al-Salamiya and Al-Hofuf.
The race ends on January 19.