Seth Quintero wins stage 5 – Henk Lategan extends overall lead

Al Ula – Ha’il  Stage 428km, liaison 64km

Nasser Al-Attiyah and Edouard Boulanger dominated the second half of the Marathon stage in their Dacia Sandrider, winning stage five by 10 minutes and 54 seconds – or so they thought. The Qatari was hit with a 10 minute penalty for missing a spare wheel at the finishing line, handing the stage win to Seth Quintero/Dennis Zenz by one second!

The penalty put the five-time Dakar winner back to 35 minutes off the overall lead.

The young American started the stage in 27^th position but set the sixth quickest time at the first waypoint on km 31. The Toyota Gazoo Hilux was into fifth by km 137, then climbed to fourth where he stayed until passing the last waypoint 51km before the finish in Ha’il.

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Those final kilometers of the stage saw the Hilux dancing across the desert, vaulting into second place which became the win.

Mattias Ekstrom/Emil Bergkvist led briefly in their Ford Raptor and held second until the final kilometers when they were blitzed were bumped into third by eight seconds after Quintero’s final stint.

Also finishing in the same minute, the overall rally leaders Henk Lategan and Brett Cummings brought their Toyota Gazoo Racing SA Hilux home 54 seconds off the top step of the stage podium. Four cars in the same minute after428km of hard racing.

Crucially for the South African Rally-Raid champions, they ended 4:17 ahead of their main rivals Yazeed Al-Rajhi/Timo Gottschalk who came home with the fifth fastest time.

Lategan extended his cushion in the overall standings to 10:17 seconds.

Behind the Overdrive Toyota, Saood Variawa and Francois Cazalet brought their TGR SA Hilux home 43 seconds adrift of the Saudi racer and nearly 4½ minutes ahead of Lucas Moraes and Armand Monleon in another GR Hilux.

Five seconds behind the Toyota was Mitch Guthrie/Kellon Walch in their Ford Raptor, quietly getting on with the job at hand which was to hang on to sixth position overall.

Mathieu Serradori/Loic Minaudier ended ninth in their factory Century Racing CR-7, 49 seconds ahead of Martin Prokop/Viktor Chytka’s Jipocar Ford Raptor.

Wednesday was a tale of punctures, with Toyota Gazoo racing suffering 17 amongst their six cars. On stage five, Giniel de Villiers sat forlornly in the desert after he ran out of tyres. Guy Botterill stopped and took one of their tyres off their car to give to de Villiers, leaving the #205 stanranded untila knight in blue armour in the shape of Lithuanians Urvo Mannama stopped and handed over one of their precious spare tyres.

Real Dakar spirit at play!

Australian KTM rider Daniel Sanders continues to lead the race after his teammate Luciano Benavides took the Thursday stage when initial winner Adrien van Beveren’s Honda and Sanders were penailsed for speeding.

Sanders languished in 25th at the first split, where 18th, 33rd and fifteenth starters, American Skyler Howes’ Honda, Rally 2 leader Michael Docherty’s KTM and Botswana’s Ross Branch led the way. The lead then shuffled between Branch, Californian Ricky Brabec’s Honda and Argentine KTM man Luciano Benavides, who had all started in the second half of the top twenty.

Another Honda rider, Frenchman Adrien van Beveren joined the party up front to soon lead Branch, Brabec and Benavides, with Docherty and class leader Edgar Canet trading blows in front of Rally 2. Leader Sanders meanwhile benefited over three minutes of bonus time to sit only six, rather than ten minutes off the pace in eighth. Up front meantime, Branch nibbled away at van Beveren’s lead as Benavides kept a watching brief and the field headed into the tricky final sector.

Van Beveren made best of that final challenge to hold on to his lead, while Branch struggled and lost a couple of places to Benavides and Chilean Hero teammate José Ignacio Cornejo to come in fourth. Brabec rode home third and Sanders amassed over five minutes of bonus to sneak home sixth on a day where his pace would not have seen him near the top ten. Bracket racing at its best! (Bike report Motorsport Media)

Tomorrow is the well deserved rest day where vehicles will be refreshed as far as possible after a brutal opening half of Dakar 2025.

Overall Results after Stage 5 (Provisional)