DAKAR 2025

Al-Attiyah puts on a show in his new 'predator mode'

Yesterday he announced: "I have no choice but to attack"... and he did it perfectly. Nasser Al-Attiyah has won the fifth stage of the Dakar 2025, between Al-Ula and Ha'il (it is his first partial victory of the year) and has taken a small bite out of the 35:53 difference that separates him from the still leader, Henk Lategan. Now it is exactly 25 minutes.

'Al-Attakiyah'...The Qatari has gone all out from minute 1, although it was not until kilometre 173 when he became the reference of the race. Since then he has gradually increased his lead over the three Toyotas in the best form (Quintero, leader Lategan, and Al-Rajhi) and Mattias Ekström, until he dealt them a good blow: 9:59 over the first, 10:53 over the leader, 14:16 over the Arab and 10:07 over Ford's last hope in this Dakar, who made his mark today. 

Lategan, líder en la jornada de descanso, está siendo la sensación del Dakar.ASO/Charly López

"It's been a good day. We had a puncture, but we're happy with how it went. We lost time yesterday but we're back in the game. The first week has been so hard that I'm going to kill Davia [Castera, race director] right now - he joked -. Next week will also be hard, but we're going to give it our all."

An interesting difference, but one that hasn't been excessive if we look at it from the point of view of the Japanese, who had the 'brown' job of opening the stage and have gotten through it relatively well, because they haven't made any navigation errors... and they still haven't suffered any major mechanical problems.

Nani Roma's tremendous scare... One of the images of the day was of Nani Roma, who suffered a shocking accident when he collided with another participant (Simon Vitse's MD) at kilometre 203, significantly damaging the front of his Ford Raptor.

The Catalan is currently repairing his vehicle and Ford is optimistic that he will be able to make it to the Ha'il camp... although he will do so late in the afternoon.

Enrique Naranjo