MOTORBIKES I SAND AND EMOTIONS FLOW FOR VAN BEVEREN AND SANDERS
- He is only human, after all. Daniel Sanders began the 2025 season with a Dakar title and capped it with the world championship. His ultra-dominant performance had raised fears that the Australian and his KTM would steamroll the opposition on the loop starting and ending in Yanbu. Indeed, the favourite to defend his own title was sticking to a tight plan and got out of bed this morning with more than 6 minutes over Ricky Brabec at the top of the overall. Despite his handling skills, robust physique and proven navigational acumen at high speeds, it all went down the drain when he crashed and hurt his left shoulder 138 km into the special. "Chucky" soldiered on to the finish but lost nearly half an hour.
- This is probably curtains for the Red Bull KTM Factory Racing's bid for glory, but the Austrian outfit has other cards to play in the fight for the 2026 title. Luciano Benavides is still in the mix after starting the special in ninth position and coming tantalisingly close to the win. He would really like to get his hands on the coveted Bedouin trophy in three days. For that to happen, the Argentinian will have to erase a deficit of about 20 seconds and prevail in an unpredictable duel with his Monster Energy Honda HRC opponent Ricky Brabec.
- The stage win went to Adrien Van Beveren, who has been on a roller-coaster since the start in Yanbu. This year, he has broken his duck on the road to Bisha, claiming the special on the day that the bivouac pays tribute to Thierry Sabine, who created Paris–Dakar and the Enduro du Touquet, the event where Van Beveren put his name on the map with three victories (2014 through 2016). The seventh Dakar stage win of his career also propelled the man from northern France one step higher in the hierarchy, where he now stands in sixth place, about an hour from the American leader.
CARS: SERRADORI AND AL ATTIYAH SHARE THE SPOILS
- Mathieu Serradori has more than one trick up his sleeve. When he claimed his maiden stage win back in 2020, he was a minnow who managed to snatch the prize from the great white sharks from time to time. He used to race in a two-wheel-drive car for the sake of Romanticism and quote poetry by Jean-Louis Schlesser. All in all, he was far from the top of the food chain. The driver from the French Riviera has since moved up to a whole new level, with a career-best sixth place overall last season after switching to a 4×4 T1 in his CR7. His performance this year has been a mixed bag, but today he hit the jackpot on the 420 km special to Bisha, defeating Al Attiyah by over 6 minutes and rocketing up four places in the overall, where he now sits fifth, 33 minutes from the Qatari… Swimming with the sharks!
- In the fight for the title, the big winner of the marathon stage was Nasser Al Attiyah, who stamped his authority on the dunes and moved back into the overall lead while leaving the competition in the dust. 1′10″ separated the provisional top 3 yesterday. The Dacia driver took that and turned it into a 12-minute gap over his closest rival, Henk Lategan, who ran out of fuel and made a navigation blunder, and 12′50″ over Nani Roma, who stayed on the provisional podium.
- The podium is back within reach for the second Dacia Sandrider, with Sébastien Loeb behind the wheel, who moved up to fourth place, 23 minutes behind his brother in arms, after Carlos Sainz and Mattias Ekström ran into trouble.
