- The rest day in Ha’il marks the halfway point of the race after five stages. There are still seven days to go for the competitors on the first leg of the season finishing in Shubaytah, in the heart of the Empty Quarter.
- In the car category, Carlos Sainz (Ford M-Sport) and Sébastien Loeb (Dacia Sandriders) have already exited the Dakar, just like Yazeed Al Rajhi and Nasser Al Attiyah did in 2024. As the current world champion and his runner-up showed last year, it would be hasty to already dismiss the ambitions of the Spaniard and the Frenchman.
- In the Ultimate class, Henk Lategan (Toyota Gazoo Racing South Africa) has made a storming entrance into the championship. The South African has let the young generation sine to focus on controlling the general rankings. Yazeed Al Rajhi (Overdrive Racing) and Mattias Ekstrom (Ford M-Sport) complete the provisional podium. Triple world champion Nasser Al Attiyah is 4th in his new Dacia Sandrider.
- In the Challenger class, Nicolas Cavigliasso, who was runner-up last season, now leads. As for the SSVs, rookie Alexander Pinto (Old Friends Racing) boasts a sizeable lead.
- In the bike category, Daniel Sanders (Red Bull KTM Factory Racing) has won on four occasions and dominates the general rankings after five stages, ahead of Monster Energy Honda HRC riders Tosha Schareina and Adrien Van Beveren. World Champion Ross Branch (Hero MotoSports), like his counterpart Al Attiyah in the car category, occupies 4th position. In the Rally 2 class, new official KTM rider Edgar Canet has enjoyed a successful beginning to the championship, providing the oranges with a double for the moment.
FIM: Branch bends but does not break
Flying under the radar is the method that Ross Branch, a Botswanan airline pilot in civilian life, applied throughout the 2024 season. The current world champion, who has never triumphed on a leg of the W2RC, contented himself with winning 5 stages during the 2024 calendar. The marathon man with race number 1 this season has already covered 2,559 km on the podium of the provisional general rankings this week. He is now in fourth place overall as week two of the rally approaches, but the ‘Kalahari Ferrari’ remained on the podium until Adrien Van Beveren pushed him down a place at the end of stage 5. Last year, Branch made do with 2nd place on completion of the Dakar to roll out his plan right up to the Rallye du Maroc and his strategy for 2025 does not seem to be different. Neither does the context, because the pack of five Honda riders that tried to stop Branch in 2024 is well installed in the top 8. Tosha Schareina, who made a premature exit from the Dakar last year, is the most prominent of the team’s representatives, occupying 2nd in the general rankings with a lead of 10’46’’ over the world number one. The other Honda ridden by AVB stands in 3rd, just 1’17’’ ahead of the Hero rider. What is new at this season’s beginning is the return to favour of Daniel Sanders. The injuries that forced the Australian to watch on from the sidelines are now a distant memory. The winner of the Moroccan finale last October is continuing at the same pace in 2025. With four stage victories since the start in Bisha, occupying the top of the general rankings since the first day, Toby Price’s heir apparent has a solid lead on the Dakar of a little more than a quarter of an hour over Schareina. KTM, which has not yet written its name on the W2RC roll of honour, has begun the fourth season of the championship in the finest of ways.
In the Rally 2 class, the pull factor created by the change to the rules for the class has swept away the established order. All the Rally 2 riders registered for a leg are automatically enrolled in the championship this year and with current title holder Bradley Cox having switched to the Rally GP class, new names are already starting to break up the hierarchy established in 2024. That of Edgar Canet has appeared the most often, as was expected. He was enrolled at the last minute by the KTM factory team and the youngest official rider in the brand’s history is emulating Sanders at the tender age of 19 years: he leads the Rally 2 rankings and has earned three stage wins on the way to Ha’il. Tobias Ebster, who has won two stages, is the only rider to have contested first place with the Spaniard in the general rankings. Michael Docherty has also won a stage, but the situation at the race’s midway point is clear: Canet leads Ebster by 16’39’’ and Docherty by 31’07’’. There are three KTM at the forefront, while the riders on Honda commercial models Romain Dumontier and Jacob Argubright, both tackling their first Dakar, are grouped in 4th place (49’47’’ behind) and 5th position (51’34’’). Neels Theric on his Kove has made a noteworthy entrance to the championship behind the reds. In the new Team rankings set up to reward the Rally 2 structures, BAS World KTM Racing are already favourites thanks to Ebster and Docherty. Canet, the only Rally 2 rider in the official KTM team, is not backed up by a second team-mate and therefore cannot score points in the rankings.
FIA: Al Attiyah and Al Rajhi flying the flag for the old school
Carlos Sainz and Sébastien Loeb started their season like Al Rajhi in 2024: by rolling their cars and being forced into a premature exit from the race. Al Attiyah also ended up dropping out last year. At the end of the season, however, the Qatari and Saudi drivers were respectively world champion and runner-up. Not finishing the Dakar is therefore most definitely not a constraint on championship ambitions, as history has already shown. However, the challenge facing Sainz and Loeb is slightly more difficult: neither of them featured in the top 5 on a stage and therefore do not have a single point in stock. Nasser and Yazeed left the rally last year with 18 and 14 points respectively.
Nothing is lost for Sainz or Loeb... just as nothing is won for Al Attiyah and Al Rajhi. Only the Saudi distinguished himself this week by winning stage 4, leaving the new generation in the Ultimate class of the W2RC, namely Seth Quintero (stages 1 and 5), Rokas Baciuska (stage 2) and Saood Variawa (stage 3), to challenge the supremacy of their elders. Henk Lategan seems like a big brother figure to the three youngsters aged between 19 to 25 years. On this edition of the Dakar, the 30-year-old South African is applying a recipe that seems to be popular in the southern part of Africa, given the parallel achievements of Botswana’s Ross Branch in the motorbike category: discretion. The official Toyota Gazoo Racing South Africa driver, who has never appeared on the boards of the W2RC, has only featured once on the podium in all of the stages so far contested but has taken command of the general rankings since stage 2. On the rest day, which is the sandy Saudi equivalent to ocean yachts passing Cape Horn, the heir to the Giniel de Villiers school of racing boasts a lead of 10’17’’ over Yazeed Al Rajhi, 20’24’’ over Mattias Ekstrom, 35’00’’ over Al Attiyah and 41’55’’ over Lucas Moraes.
The official and Overdrive Racing Hiluxes occupy the top two places and have won all the stages during the first week, in keeping with their triple constructors’ world title. As for the new vehicles taking part in the championship, the result is less rosy but not terrible. Dacia’s hopes once again lie in the expert hands of Nasser Al Attiyah and his spectacular comebacks, now escorted by a team-mate who has taken on the role of watercarrier, namely Cristina Gutiérrez. Mattias Ekstrom, who lies just ahead of the world champion in the general rankings, is in a similar position: Mitch Guthrie, currently 6th in the general rankings, is there to cover his back. The Minis driven by Guillaume de Mévius and Guerlain Chicherit are no longer in the reckoning, lagging behind the race leader by more than one and a half hours. Dacia and Ford can still hope to achieve victory, as the route is still long up to the final finishing line in Shubaytah: there are still 2,383 kilometres of specials let to cover after the 2,579 km already behind the cars.
In the Challenger class, Rokas Baciuska’s move to the Ultimate class naturally gave encouragement to the man who was runner-up to him in 2024, Nicolas Cavigliasso. The Argentinean first had to deal with the new squad of the Red Bull Off-Road Junior Team led by American Corbin Leaverton and Portugal’s Gonçalo Guerreiro. Experience tipped the scales in favour of Cavigliasso and his co-pilot and wife, 2024 champion Valentina Pertegarini. The duo has reached the race midway point with a lead of 28’34’’ over the Portuguese driver. Another pair of newcomers to the championship have begun their season quite impressively: Abdulaziz and Nasser Al Kuwari, backed by the Qatar Motor and Motorcycle Federation (QMMF) and competing for Nasser Racing, are 3rd, 1:31’35’’ behind the leader.
In the SSV class, Dakar and championship rookie Alexandre Pinto, who won the Road to the Dakar challenge on the Rallye du Maroc in 2024, currently leads the provisional rankings. The young, 25-year-old Portuguese rider and his co-pilot Bernardo Oliveira, who is even 5 years younger than him, already boast a lead of 5:45’26’’ over Enrico Gaspari (TH-Trucks) and 6:31’37’’ over another new face this season, Dutchman Roger Grouwels (Raceart).
