Dakar Rally 2025: Stage 5 completed as crews arrive in Hail to complete week 1
10th January 2025The Dakar has completed its transition to Hail, for the fifth stage of the event, with the leaderboards remaining unchanged ahead of the much-earned rest day.
Feature image credit: Marcelo Maragni / Red Bull Content Pool
The Dakar Rally heads towards Hail as the sport journeys east across Saudi Arabia for the first time after many stages heading north from Bisha, at the start. It marks the second stage of the marathon segment with a total of 428km of terrain to complete.
This stage completes the first week of the 2025 Dakar Rally as the teams and drivers will be gifted a well-earned rest day on Friday, January 10, before they get back into action on Saturday, January 11.
One of the big moments of stage five came with Nani Roma and Alex Haro, of Ford M-Sport, who endured a head-on collision with MD Rallye Sport’s Simon Vitse and Max Delfino. Roma reported he had to find a waypoint and when he returned to the track, he collided with Vitse. The latter stated there was a big rock in his field of view and couldn’t see Roma coming.
Just spectacular! 🚀🚀🚀🚀🚀#Dakar2025 pic.twitter.com/ogNWgkGObu
— DAKAR RALLY (@dakar) January 9, 2025
Heading into the rest day, Daniel Sanders, Red Bull KTM, has maintained his lead in the Bike class. The Australian rider remains in front by seven minutes over Monster Energy Honda’s Tosha Schareina whereas Hero Motorsport Team’s Ross Branch remains in third place, 17 minutes off the pace.
Toyota Gazoo Racing’s Henk Lategan and Brett Cummings head the car class with an overall time of 28 hours, 10 minutes and 11 seconds, 10 minutes ahead of their closest competitors Overdrive Racing’s Yazeed Al Rajhi and Timo Gottschalk. Ford M-Sport’s Mattias Ekstrom and Emil Bergkvist round out the top three 20 minutes behind Lategan.
Sebastien Loeb Racing team remain in a provisional one-two position with Brock Heger and Max Eddy leading the way in the SSV classification ahead of teammates Xavier de Soultrait and Martin Bonnet. As such, the podium positions remain unchanged as Old Friends Rally Team’s Alexandre Pinto and Bernardo Oliveira round out the top three.
Heger and Eddy still have a comfortable advantage going into the second half of the event as they have over an hour’s worth of time in hand over both Soultrait and Bonnet.
Martin Macik, Frantisek Tomasek and David Svanda of MM Technology continue to lead the Truck class but there has been a change just behind them.
Mitchel van den Brink, Moises Torrallardona and Jarno van de Pol of Eurol Rally Sport now occupy second place having overtaken third-placed Ales Loprais, David Kripal and Darek Rodewald, Instatrade Loprais Team, in the overall standings.
Read more Rally Raid here:
- Dakar 2025: Rally moves north as Sebastien Loeb rolls
- Dakar Rally 2025: 48H Chrono completed as Sainz retires
- Dakar Rally 2025: Quintero credited win as the iconic rally begins
- Dakar Rally 2024 – Stage 10: Alula loop maintains the title fight
- Dakar Rally 2024 – Stage 6: 48H Chrono completed
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