This stage could well have been a trailer for the 2025 Dakar, shining a spotlight on two aspects of the Saudi expanses where the 47th edition is taking place. The special had the potential to restore minds and bodies to their pre-race day condition, beginning with a long sector on fast plateaus where Ross Branch and Guerlain Chicherit blundered out of the rally, followed by technical, rocky sections. A transfer split the longest stage of the Dakar (606 km) in two and directed the field towards the second week, packed with sand in all shapes and colours. Clarity of mind was essential to finding the way out of this maze of dunes ranging from white to saffron yellow depending on the angle of the light or the composition of the sand. Adrien Van Beveren gave a masterclass in navigation and finished second in the motorbike stage, right behind his Honda teammate Ricky Brabec. Last but certainly not least, Guillaume de Mévius and his co-driver, Mathieu Baumel, bounced back with a win in Al Duwadimi.
The reigning champion, Ricky Brabec, let his experience do the talking. He claimed his eleventh career stage win by 23 seconds over his teammate Adrien Van Beveren and moved up two places to fourth overall. The Frenchman gave a navigation masterclass and scooped up all the time bonuses available to the first rider on the course, tightening his grip on third place overall, 1′11″ behind the leader, Daniel Sanders.
One of the heavy hitters in the class, the Motswana Ross Branch, crashed out of the race at km 84. That was also where Bradley Cox, the 2024 W2RC champion in Rally 2, finally threw in the towel after limping on for a while following a crash right after the start.
The first special of the second week ushered in a new scenario without a single Toyota Hilux on the stage podium. Guillaume de Mévius and his Mini put an end to the Japanese maker's unbeaten run since the prologue in Bisha, prevailing over his teammate João Ferreira and Nasser Al Attiyah, who is determined to drag himself back into contention in his Dacia.
The Qatari continued to gnaw away at his deficit, gaining about 5 minutes on the leader, Henk Lategan. Even so, it was not good enough to surpass Mattias Ekström, third overall. Yazeed Al Rajhi emerged as the greatest threat to the South African, slashing their difference to a meagre 7′16″ —just a few grains of sand in the enormity of the desert.
Performance of the day:
He was never going to allow that to stand. Guillaume de Mévius, the runner-up of the previous edition, third in the Rallye du Maroc, was seen as a serious contender for the title… until a disastrous opening week buried his overall ambitions. However, the Red Devil was hell-bent on getting something positive out of the special and the Dakar as a whole. He started in twelfth position with the full power of his spanking-new petrol-fuelled Mini at his disposal and cleared the 605 km stage with 1′34″ to spare over his young teammate João Ferreira. It was the first triumph for one of Sven Quandt's Minis since 2021, before the German shifted his focus to the Audi project for a while. As the icing on the cake, this big comeback ended the victorious streak of their next-door neighbours at Toyota Hilux, who had earlier taken the top spot with five different drivers. The infernal pace set by De Mévius on the road to Al Duwadimi had a muted impact on the overall. He now sits fourteenth, 3 h 43 behind Lategan, but just 16 minutes behind his next target, fellow "Toy" driver Rokas Baciuška in thirteenth place.
A crushing blow
Guerlain Chicherit knows a thing or two about jumping and floating in thin air, and not just from his early years as a Freeride World Champion skier. The driver from Savoy has a legion of fans who love his bold demeanour and know that he can go from heaven to hell in the blink of an eye at the Dakar. Following his career-best performance from last season, in which he had bagged two stage wins and knocked on the door of the podium dominated by Carlos Sainz, he returned to X-raid with lofty ambitions in a new, petrol-fuelled Mini. He came close to victory in the opening stage (second, 55 seconds behind Quintero), but his hopes of a high finish were dashed when he dropped over an hour in the 48 h chrono stage. Chicherit, eleventh overall at more than 1 h 20 from Lategan this morning, was determined to pile the pressure on the drivers ahead of him, but he flipped over his Mini in a fast section 16 km into the special. While the crew avoided serious injury, the pain in his neck was worrying enough for Chicherit to request a helicopter extraction for himself and his co-driver, Alexandre Winocq. This is his fifth withdrawal in fourteen starts, bringing back memories of Mini's first appearance in 2011, when he got hurt during a test on the rest day.
Source: A.S.O. / Dakar
Photo: A.S.O./J.Delfosse/DPPI
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