DAKAR 2025

Luciano Benavides wins and Daniel Sanders sees his lead in the 2025 Dakar cut

The Argentine Luciano Benavides has inherited the victory in the fifth stage of the 2025 Dakar after the two-minute penalty to the Frenchman Adrien Van Beveren. The Australian Daniel Sanders has also been penalized, which means that his advantage in the general classification over the Spaniard Tosha Schareina is cut to less than seven minutes just before the rest day.

After achieving his fourth partial victory in the current Dakar yesterday, Daniel Sanders faced the challenge of opening the track knowing that his great rival in the general classification, Tosha Schareina, started three minutes later. So the Australian's plan was to go out at full speed to be caught by the Honda rider as late as possible and thus accumulate the greatest number of bonuses alone.

Said and done: the Australian, winner of four stages, even managed to open up a bigger gap over the Spaniard, who was caught by the Chilean Nacho Cornejo and Adrien Van Beveren himself. The three of them finally managed to catch Sanders to form a leading quartet.

Meanwhile, the fight for the stage win was really tight, as some of the riders who started further back, such as the Americans Skyler Howes and Ricky Brabec, the Botswana native Ross Branch or the Argentine Luciano Benavides, were interspersed at the top of the stages with Cornejo and Van Beveren.

Adrien Van Beveren has lost the stage win due to a penalty(image above)

Finally, it was the Frenchman Adrien Van Beveren who established himself at the top and walked steadily towards a stage win that would only last a few minutes; as a two-minute penalty relegated him to second position, 47 seconds behind the Argentine Luciano Benavides, winner of the stage between AlUla and Hail after investing 4 hours and 53 minutes in covering the 428 kilometres of the special.

A minute and a half behind the winner, Nacho Cornejo repeated yesterday's third place to confirm his progressive adaptation to the Hero; with Ross Branch and Ricky Brabec losing just over three minutes and missing a great chance to make up time, as did Skyler Howes, who gave up 4:40.

In fact, the American had finished behind Daniel Sanders; but an eight-minute penalty to the Australian for several speeding offences took him out of the top 10 of the stage and reduced his lead in the general classification to less than half over Tosha Schareina, seventh in the stage, just over five minutes behind the youngest of the Benavides. After the penalty to his rival, the Spaniard went from being 15 minutes behind to just over seven.

Edgar Canet finished eighth and added a new stage win in Rally2, with the Slovak Stefan Svitko and the South African Michael Docherty completing the top 10. Outside of it were the Chilean Pablo Quintanilla, the aforementioned Daniel Sanders and the Castilian-Leonese Lorenzo Santolino.

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