The Dakar is witnessing a tight race like never before, and the resumption of the rally maintained unprecedented margins throughout the history of the race: less than 30 minutes separate the first and tenth classified overall for cars after 2,766 kilometers and seven long days of fighting against the stopwatch. The Qatari Nasser Al-Attiyah (Dacia) still leads, but the Swede Mattias Ekström (Ford) tightens the screws, as sharp or sharper than his experienced and iconic teammates, a Nani Roma and distances from the leader.
They were marginal gains, and the best news for all of them was that Henk Lategan and his Toyota saw their magnificent progress cut short in the last stage of the day’s special. The South African lost almost nine minutes in just 40 kilometers. He went from seeing himself as the winner of the stage and leader to falling from a podium that Ekström and Roma complete right now, five and seven minutes from the head of the race at the gates of stage 8 marked in red by David Castera, director of the Dakar. “It will be the most beautiful stage, but I don’t know if they will be able to enjoy it. What I am sure is that they will remember it.” In the midst of a wind of sand in the oasis of Al Dawasir, the flying Swede completed the 462-kilometer special between Riyadh and the finish line in 3h44m22s, his sixth stage victory in six participations in the rally rally after two decades dedicated to asphalt and touring cars.
The second week of the Dakar has almost 1,000 more kilometers of specials than the first, and the big movements in the general classification have not yet arrived. Sainz and Roma lost just over six minutes compared to their teammate, the third stage winner for Ford this year and also the winner of the prologue in Yanbu. The Catalan and two-time winner of the test was officially returned this Sunday to the victory achieved in stage 5 thanks to a failure in his navigation and GPS system, responsible for recording excess speeds, allowing the one minute and 10 second penalty imposed by the FIA to be invalidated. This is the 27th victory for the first Spanish winner of the Dakar (14 in cars, 13 in motorcycles), one of the three drivers in history (along with Hubert Auriol and Stéphane Peterhansel) capable of winning both the car and motorcycle categories.
In the running are still eternal favorites such as the Frenchman Sébastien Loeb, sixth in the stage and 15 minutes away overall, or members of the new batch such as the Brazilian Lucas Moraes, current world champion of the specialty and ninth in the table, 24 minutes behind the leader. The Polish Eryk Goczal (Toyota), at 21 years old, closes the Top 10 of the classification 25 minutes behind Al-Attiyah. “Since I saw the route, I understood that it would be the most difficult Dakar in Saudi Arabia. We are facing the strongest competition in the entire history of the rally, with many cars, brands and drivers involved. The race has been transformed, it has more sprint moments, but also more management. Every small problem you have can be devastating,” analyzed the five-time winner of the event.
Benavides joins the party on motorcycles
On motorcycles, Argentine Luciano Benavides achieved his second stage victory in this edition and is running as a candidate to overthrow his KTM teammate and race leader Daniel Sanders. The driver from Salta, who at 30 years old has never managed to finish in the top five in the Dakar, won the day’s special with a time of 4h00m56s, beating his neighbor in the motorhome, the Catalan Edgar Canet. Dismissed in the general classification, twelfth, more than 10 hours behind the leader, the pearl of two wheels continues to demonstrate that he has a very bright future ahead of him, and due to a detour of three additional kilometers after getting lost at one point in the special, he was left without his third stage victory.
one of the favorites for victory at the beginning of the rally, lost ground throughout the day, where he shared the tasks of opening the track with his teammate Ricky Brabec. The American is second overall, four and a half minutes behind the current Australian champion, while Benavides is 4m40s behind and the Spanish Honda rider falls just over 15 minutes behind in fourth place.
481 kilometers with a very varied menu await the competitors this Monday in a region where the rally has not entered since 2022. It will be the longest special of the seventh edition in Saudi Arabia. There will be large expanses of sand, narrow canyons, stretches of lots of vegetation and, of course, space for the dreaded stones.
