The French driver Guerlain Chicherit (Mini), in the car category, and the Australian Daniel Sanders (KTM), in the motorcycle category, have won this Saturday in the first stage of the Dakar Rally 2025, a 413-kilometer special starting and arrival in Bisha (Saudi Arabia), while the Spanish Carlos Sainz (Ford) has staged an epic comeback to be seventh, with Cristina Gutiérrez (Dacia) fifth less than minute and a half, and Tosha Schareina (Honda) is fourth overall on two wheels.
In a stage marked by strategy, in view of the starting positions for the dreaded Chrono 48 Hours stage, Chicherit did not speculate and achieved his first victory in the toughest raid in the world since 2021 by ending the day with 50 seconds of advantage over the American Seth Quintero (Toyota).
In the motorcycle category, the winner of Friday’s prologue, Daniel Sanders, achieved his second partial victory in the Saudi raid by entering the finish line with a time of 4:41:27, 2:04 ahead of the American Ricky Brabec (Honda) and 2:26 from Botswana Ross Branch (Hero), current world champion.
This Sunday, the runners will face the Chrono 48 Hours stage, a two-day day that also starts and ends in Bisha with more than 1,000 kilometers of travel through the desert and without mechanical assistance. Participants must stop at one of the six rest areas enabled on the itinerary on days where the dunes will be less imposing, with stretches of one hundred kilometers daily.