DAKAR 2025

Daniel Sanders flies and Tosha Schareina presents her candidacy for the Dakar 2025

The Australian Daniel Sanders(image above) counts the stages of the Dakar 2025 as victories: after winning yesterday's prologue, he repeated in the first stage, beating the American Ricky Brabec and the Botswana Ross Branch by more than two minutes, with the Spaniard Tosha Schareina losing four minutes due to an error in the roadbook.

The starting order today was a free choice for the fastest riders from yesterday and the lead was paid by the Saudi Mohammed Balooshi... for just a few kilometres: the time it took the Chilean Nacho Cornejo to overtake him, who in his first Dakar with Hero would be in charge of opening the track - and collecting the bonuses - from the beginning to the end.

More than 40 minutes later, the fastest from yesterday started, and to no one's surprise they were becoming the fastest today. Ricky Brabec set the pace at the first two points, Ross Branch took the lead at the third and, from the fourth, it was Daniel Sanders who set the best time.

Ricky Brabec se ha situado segundo en la primera etapa del Dakar 2025(image above)

The Australian forgot about strategies and squeezed the throttle to the finish to complete the 412-kilometre loop special with start and finish in Bisha in a time of 4 hours, 41 minutes and 27 seconds, leaving Ricky Brabec just over two minutes behind, and slowing down at the end did not help him to lose any positions.

Ross Branch(image below) finished almost two and a half minutes behind, while Tosha Schareina made a mistake in the last section due to a mistake in the roadbook, which prevented him from fighting for the stage win and relegated him to fourth position at the finish.

A fourth position that would become fifth when the American Skyler Howes was given back the more than ten minutes he lost when he was left next to the German Sebastian Bühler, who said goodbye to the Dakar 2025 at the first opportunity after injuring his shoulder in a fall, becoming the first casualty among the RallyGP drivers.

Outside of that top 5, interesting gaps have already begun to open up: the Argentine Luciano Benavides lost eight minutes at the finish line - which became ten with two penalties -, eleven to the Chilean Pablo Quintanilla, fourteen to the Frenchman Adrien Van Beveren and 18 to the Chilean Nacho Cornejo, already counting the 5'35'' bonus for completing the stage in first position.

The top 10 was closed by the South African Bradley Cox, with Lorenzo Santolino twelfth, already losing more than half an hour. Edgar Canet made a navigation error and lost more than 20 minutes in the final stage, finishing 15th after passing the last waypoint in seventh position. Even so, he is second in the Rally2 general classification, 29 seconds behind Austrian Tobias Ebster.

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