Dakar 2025 – Stage 1: Quintero credited win as the iconic rally begins

Dakar 2025 – Stage 1: Quintero credited win as the iconic rally begins

5th January 2025 0 By Kamron Kent

The 2025 World Rally Raid Championship’s Dakar Rally has begun, igniting the start of the year of motorsport on the golden sands of Saudi Arabia. 

Feature image credit: Kin Marcin / Red Bull Content Pool

The opening stage of the event, which followed Friday’s prologue, spanned a staggering 499km in total circling south of Bisha, ahead of the 48-hour stage on Sunday. 

Stage 1 saw riders and drivers face trouble with the terrain across the Aseer region of Saudi Arabia as they began the gruelling challenge. It wasn’t without issue as Hero Motorsports Team’s Sebastien Bühler crashed and broke his collar bone 68km into the stage, retiring as a result. 

Some previous rally winners also changed allegiances of machinery for this edition of the rally with Toby Price and Sam Sunderland both opting for four wheels instead of their usual two with the Overdrive team. Although this was a new challenge for the duo, they still finished the opening challenge in 12th. 

Red Bull KTM’s Daniel Sanders set the pace on S1 for the Bike classification as he completed the course in four hours 43 minutes and 31 seconds ahead of Monster Energy Honda’s Ricky Brabec. Ross Branch, of Hero Motorsports Team, completed the provisional podium places in third place. 

Although X-Raid Mini’s Guerlain Chicherit and Alex Winoqc took the fastest time overall for the cars category, the overall stage winner was deemed to be Toyota Gazoo Racing’s Seth Quintero and Dennis Zenz. This came after the race officials credited the Toyota crew with 95 seconds, for sportsmanship, after he lost time to stop and help Laia Sanz who crashed. 

Chicherit and Winoqc, as a result of Quintero’s credited time, dropped to second place in the overall class classification with Toyota’s Saood Variawa and Francois Cazalet rounding out the top three.

In the SSVs, Sebastien Loeb Racing’s Xavier de Soultrait and Martin Bonnet and Brock heger and Max Eddy completed the top three positions, in first and third respectively. Can-Am Factory’s Francisco Lopez Contardo and Juan Pablo Latrach completed the Sebastien Loeb Racing sandwich, in second place overall in the category.  

Eurol Rally Sport led the Truck category after the opening stage with Michel van den Brink, Moises Torrallardona and Jarno van de Pol leading the way with five hours, 11 minutes and nine seconds. They were closely followed by Instratade Loprais Team’s Ales Loprais, David Kripol and David Rodewald in second. 

MM Technology’s Martin Macik, Frantisek Tomasek and David Svanda completed the top three of the truck class, two minutes behind. 

Next up is the 48-Hour Chrono around the same section of Stage 1, Bisha, but in its northern region where the remaining competitors will compete over 992km of Saudi Arabian terrain.

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CategoryDakar Rally Rally Raid Rallying

About the author

Hi, I'm Kamron. I created ApexMotorsports.co.uk in the dying embers of the 2021 Formula 1 world championship. It allowed me freedom to write whatever I wanted to write about which was all things motorsports, my passion. I have put a lot of effort in over the years to keep this website in its best shape and I've loved seeing the brand grow consistently, month-on-month, year-on-year. My ambition is to keep watching this brand grow into a primary outlet of news for all things motorsports whilst fueling my desire to pursue a career in sports journalism, specialising in motorsports.

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