Haradh is located in the middle of the eastern province, the largest in Saudi Arabia, through which the vehicles of the Dakar caravan sped today, their riders and drivers intently focused to avoid being caught out by the tangle of tracks. Over a distance against the clock of 357 kilometres and at a high pace requiring speedy roadbook reading, the main pitfalls to be avoided for the pretenders to the rally’s various crowns concerned navigation. The elite bikers put in solid performances in this domain, especially Luciano Benavides, who opened the stage alone from start to finish to win a second consecutive stage this year. Nasser Al Attiyah has nothing left to prove in this register, but he has given Dacia its first Dakar stage victory and allows himself a chance of remaining in the reckoning for the title... Yet with 25 minutes to make up on Yazeed Al Rajhi, that is quite a challenge!

Outline
• Great riders are recognized by their ability to navigate a stage alone and thus win two consecutive stages. That is what Luciano Benavides managed to do, as he improved his roll of honour with the 5th stage victory of his career on the Dakar and moved up to 4th place in the general rankings for his best-ever position.
• The Argentinean beat Adrien Van Beveren by 1’54’’ over the route of the day’s special. It was also a good day for the Frenchman as he closed in on his Spanish team-mate Tosha Schareina, who was off the pace due to a fall at the beginning of the special. The battle for second place is occurring some way behind race leader Daniel Sanders, who will tackle the decisive stage 10 with a lead of 14’45’’ and from 3rd position in the starting order.
• “There is no time left to gain time” is what Nasser Al Attiyah must have said to himself on waking in Riyadh, and the Qatari driver went on all-out attack on the day’s stage. At the finishing line, he produced the best time, though it was meagre pickings, even if the result means he is now only 31’’ from the third step on the provisional podium occupied by Mattias Ekstrom.
• Yazeed Al Rajhi, however, has taken command of the race, benefitting from Henk Lategan’s navigation mistakes and punctures. The Saudi driver will enter the Empty Quarter tomorrow with a lead of 7’09’’ over his South African team-mate and 24’50’’ over the Swede’s Ford Raptor.
• Argentinean David Zille has added his name to the list of six stage winners in the Challenger class, in which he already tasted success on one occasion in 2023. His exploit has not affected the serene but steady progress of Nicolas Cavigliasso, who still leads the general rankings by 28 minutes ahead of Gonçalo Guerreiro.
• Nobody knows whether ‘Chaleco Lopez still believes in his chances of victory, but the emblematic Can-Am driver is doing his utmost to pick up stage wins. The Chilean obtained his fourth success, bringing him to within twenty minutes of Xavier de Soultrait but still far behind Brock Heger, who is 2 hours 7 minutes ahead.
• Mitchel van den Brink was missing a minute and a half to give himself a stage victory on his 23rd birthday. Instead, Ales Loprais added to his collection, winning for the third time this year and quite ironically picking up his 23rd stage success on the event. In the general rankings, Martin Macik is unruffled thanks to a lead of 2 hours 23 minutes over the young Dutchman.

Performance of the day
Is it possible to win on the Dakar 2025 by opening the stage from the first to the last kilometre? Since today, the answer is a resounding yes. Following his victory the day before, Luciano Benavides was the first rider out today and opened the throttle over the 357 kilometres of the special. He finished behind Adrien Van Beveren by 2’57’’ in pure racing terms but the Argentinean tasted success thanks to bonuses of 4’51’’. Among this edition’s previous winners, the earliest to set off was AVB, who was the 4th man out on stage 5. History has repeated itself for the younger Benavides brother, who already won on a stage between Riyadh and Haradh, in 2023, also on a stage 9. Five days later, his brother Kevin won the Dakar. Today, although he is out of the race, he has remained alongside Luciano to support him in his quest for success. Today’s win is the 7th for KTM since the start and the Austrian constructor had not won as many stages in a single edition since 2018, a year in which it also claimed triumph in the general rankings. Will the feat be repeated in Shubaytah?
A crushing blow
The approach to the last few days of the Dakar is always delicate. It is especially the moment of truth for the riders and drivers leading the general rankings and the sequence is all the more stressful when experiencing it for the first time, like Henk Lategan, with a pursuer of Yazeed Al Rajhi’s calibre just 21 seconds behind. Nobody can say with any certainty that the South African cracked under the pressure, but when opening the way after his stage victory yesterday, the Toyota driver collected one mishap after another: a puncture after only five kilometres of the special, getting lost after 13 km and then another puncture which saw him cross the finishing line on a completely flat tyre. At the end of the day, the outcome was costly, with 11th place, 16’02’’ behind Nasser Al Attiyah. This setback naturally led to him ceding his leader’s throne to his rival and Saudi team-mate, in whose wake he now trails 7 minutes back. South African supporters following the Dakar had another reason to be glum today as Guy Botterill was forced out of the race after trashing his car in an accident after 272 km. The outlook has considerably clouded over for the rainbow nation.

Stat of the day 10 out of 10
Brock Heger was an unknown on the bivouac on his arrival in Bisha. However, the reporters present have got used to writing and pronouncing his name, because he has dominated the SSV general rankings since the evening of stage 4 when he took the lead from his Sébastien Loeb Racing teammate, Xavier de Soultrait. Furthermore, the Californian market gardener has shown that he has not come to Saudi Arabia to vegetate in the lower reaches of the ranks in his Polaris RZR, showing exemplary consistency. Since his victory on the prologue, he is the sole competitor on the rally to have not finished a special outside the day’s top three, which is a seamless performance..

Quote of the day
Henk Lategan: “A messy, messy, messy day for us”
“It’s a bit of a disaster to be honest. It was really a mess, about 13 km in and we got lost. We thought we missed the waypoint but we actually had it. It wasn’t great and when we got lost we got one puncture and then towards the end we got another one and the wheel is actually flat. So, it was a messy, messy, messy day for us but it’s not the end of the world, we’re still in it. But it’s a bit of a disappointing day.”

The making of a classic
The Land Rovers have made the 5th edition of the Dakar Classic a noteworthy one! Three of the constructor’s vehicles took starter’s orders in Bisha, to represent the saga of the English dynasty that extends back from the Series III to the Range Rover and including the immortal Defender. This morning, the ‘110’ driven by Maxime Gublin and its ancestor in the hands of Karolis Raysis were 3rd and 4th in the general rankings! With their ladder-adorned chassis that have endured through the ages, these two Land Rovers are acting as a stepping stone for the arrival of the official Defender team in the ‘modern’ version of the Dakar, which will be the brand’s first official commitment in the off-road domain. Three Defenders will be enrolled in the Stock category opposite the Auto Body Land Cruisers. The English stable Prodrive – who else? – will be in charge of running the team. Will it be the Dakar Classic version or the Stock category model that emulates Alain Genestier’s triumph on the first Paris-Dakar in 1979? That is the question…

W2RC: Second success for the Sandrider
By authoritatively winning the day’s stage, Nasser Al Attiyah has written the first line on Dacia’s roll of honour on the Dakar. It is not the first time in the W2RC, because the Sandrider already celebrated its first victory on stage 1 at the Rallye du Maroc in 2024. For its first competitive steps, the brand new 4x4 contested the season’s finale, which Nasser completed by obtaining his 3rd world champion’s title. In personal terms on the Dakar, it is the Qatari’s 48th victory, bringing him to within one success of the record of 50 stage wins held by Peterhansel and Vatanen. In the W2RC, it is the 41st victory achieved by Al Attiyah in the competition created in 2022. Out of 114 days of racing, it brings the Qatari’s proportion of wins on the championship to 36%. With an average of 13 victories per season, the official Dacia driver could reach 50 W2RC successes in 2025. The Sandrider’s 2 successes could also soon be multiplied thanks to the efforts of Sébastien Loeb, who is second in the ranks of stage win hunters in the W2RC with 20 victories under his belt. The Frenchman will be making his return in late February at the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge alongside Nasser Al Attiyah.

Source: A.S.O. / Dakar
Photo: A.S.O./A.Vincent/DPPI