The Empty Quarter has to be earned. Dakar entrants had to wait until stage 10 to frolic on its dunes. The field rolled out of Haradh before the sun peeked over the horizon to tackle a road section of more than 500 kilometres en route to the shores of the Arabian Gulf. The time had come to surf a sea of dunes, where the Big Kahunas rule the waves, for 117 kilometres of sand, sand and more sand. Michael Docherty, free of strategic concerns, tapped his raw speed and intimate knowledge of the dunes —he lives next door— to open his account at the Dakar. Nani Roma was content to pursue his 26th Dakar stage win (motorbike and car categories combined), which he did in Shubaytah when he put a Ford Raptor at the top of the leader board for the first time ever. The fight for the battle will resume in the Empty Quarter tomorrow.
Accurately predicting that the main contenders would keep their powder dry, Michael Docherty went for broke today. The South African Rally 2 biker danced gracefully over the dunes to take his very first Dakar stage win by 1′20″ over Rui Gonçalves and 2′21″ over Tobias Ebster.
As expected, the title contenders kept their cards close to their chests in anticipation of the second stage in the Empty Quarter, which will take place tomorrow. Daniel Sanders remains perched at the top of the ranking with 16′31″ in hand over Tosha Schareina and 22′24″ over Adrien Van Beveren. The starting order, which will keep fans and pundits busy, will encourage the rivals of the man from Oz to try and stage a sensational comeback.
Starting far behind was a must for any driver eyeing victory on the dedicated course for cars. Nani Roma, the 27thdriver out of the gate, pounced on the opportunity and went back to his winning ways at the Dakar a decade later. Back then, the Spaniard was driving a Mini, and today, he earned Ford its first win with the Raptor by a slim 18-second margin over Lucas Moraes! This is his 26th career special in the motorbike and car categories combined.
As short as it was, the stage reshaped on the top of the classification, with Henk Lategan soldiering through an unpleasant day to retake the overall lead. He now leads Yazeed Al Rajhi by 2′27″ and Mattias Ekström by 26′46″. The Saudi got stuck in a hollow for a short time, while the Swede eased up for strategic reasons near the finish.
Nasser Al Attiyah, on the other hand, most definitely did not lose time on purpose. He dropped about 20 minutes to Roma after messing up his navigation at km 9. Henk Lategan, half an hour away, may as well be on the other side of the world, but with Mattias Ekström under 4 minutes away, the Qatari can still salvage his honour and finish on the bottom step of the podium.
Dania Akeel emerged victorious from the Challenger special, joining Jutta Kleinschmidt, Cristina Gutiérrez and Sara Price as only the fourth woman to win a stage of the Dakar. As if that were not enough, Akeel and her Taurus also charged to third place overall in the stage, right behind Nani Roma in his Ford and Lucas Moraes aboard his Toyota. Nicolás Cavigliasso remains undisturbed at the top of the ranking, with 26 minutes to spare over Gonçalo Guerreiro.
"Chaleco" López nabbed the fifth stage win of his 2025 Saudi campaign in SSV. The Chilean also moved within fifteen minutes of Xavier de Soultrait, who is still a distant second overall, miles behind his Polaris teammate Brock Heger.
More or less the same goes for Aleš Loprais, who scooped up his fourth stage win but remains far behind Mitchel van den Brink and, especially, Martin Macík, who has built up a seemingly unassailable lead of 2 h 22 in the truck race.
Performance of the day
A Rally 2 rider snatching a stage win from the Rally GP bigwigs is a rare occurrence —so rare, in fact, that it had only happened once before in the history of the Dakar since the inception of the class in 2022. That same year, Danilo Petrucci showed how it was done by claiming stage 5. Michael Docherty added his name to the list today. While others were playing 4D chess, he just twisted the throttle all the way back in an environment he knows like the palm of his hand. Born in Kempton Park, the BAS World KTM Racing biker lives in the United Arab Emirates, which borders on Saudi Arabia and also contains part of the Empty Quarter desert. In fact, he had already claimed victory on the other side of the border at the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge, the second round of the World Rally-Raid Championship. He also catapulted South Africa to the top of a Dakar motorbike stage for the first time since Alfie Cox bagged his last win in 2003. That was 22 years ago… and, as fate would have it, Docherty is sporting race number 22 in the Dakar!
A crushing blow
Not all is lost for Yazeed Al Rajhi, who has his best shot at winning the Dakar since his debut in 2015, particularly as the standard-bearer for Saudi Arabia, which is hosting the event for the sixth time in a row. However, he could have certainly done without the setback he experienced today. One day after seizing the lead, the Toyota driver had to relinquish the coveted top spot back to Henk Lategan. Al Rajhi stumbling at the final hurdle in the Empty Quarter evokes a sense of déjà vu. Last year, he pressed so hard that his car took flight for a brief moment before crashing out of the race. This time round, the Saudi made the opposite mistake: an overabundance of caution led him to surf the dunes too slowly. He was courting disaster… and, indeed, it struck at km 83, when he got stuck in a hollow, a minor calamity that relegated him to 2′27″ behind the South African leader in the overall. Sure, his late start (27th) will play to his advantage, but Lategan (11th) will not have to open the 284 km special either. The slightest mistake can prove fatal.
Source: A.S.O. / Dakar
Photo: A.S.O./Julien Delfosse/DPPI
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