Yazeed al-Rajhi and Daniel Sanders won the 4th stage of the 2025 Dakar rally on Wednesday, in the car and motorcycle races respectively. This so-called “marathon” stage, with a 415 km special between Al Henakiyah and Al Ula in Saudi Arabia, has the particularity that the runners arrive in a basic bivouac where they cannot call on their assistance team before resuming the route. road Thursday.
In the cars, Yazeed al-Rajhi and his co-driver Tim Gottschalk (Overdrive) were in the lead throughout the race and finished in 4h26″40, 4'51 ahead of South African Henk Lategan (Toyota), first in the race. provisional general classification This performance allows the Saudi driver to take second place overall, 6'54 behind Lategan.
Handicapped by technical problems, Qatari Nasser al-Attiyah (Dacia) finished 19th, 33'27 behind al-Rajhi, after having managed to make up part of his deficit. He fell to 7th place overall. Sixth in this stage with 14 minutes behind the winner, the French duo Mathieu Serradori-Loïc Minaudier (Century) moved up from 7th to 4th place overall.
At the start of the week the premier category lost two of its heavyweights, with the exit one day apart of the title holder Carlos Sainz then the Frenchman Sébastien Loeb. Both had to retire for safety reasons due to damage to their car's roll bar after accidents. A decision of the race stewards “hard to swallow“, for the 50-year-old Alsatian.
Sanders domine
In motorcycle racing, Australian Daniel Sanders continues to dominate. He won on Wednesday by a few seconds ahead of Tosha Schareina. Having led almost the entire special, the 29-year-old Spaniard (Honda) was 2'30 ahead of Sanders (KTM) 32 km from the finish and was approaching the first stage victory of his career. However, he deliberately slowed down to allow himself to be overtaken.
“I wasted two minutes so I wouldn't have to open it tomorrow. We had to be careful with the bike, with the tires, because it's the marathon stage and tomorrow we still have more than 400 kilometers to do“, explained Schareina.
Chilean José Ignacio Cornejo Florimo and Frenchman Adrien Van Beveren finished 3rd and 4th in the special. With only 15 seconds behind Sanders at the finish of the stage, this great operation allows Tosha Schareina to take second place in the provisional general classification, 13'26 behind the Australian, and ahead of the Botswanan Ross Branch (Hero).
In Al Ula, motorcyclists are allowed half an hour or one hour of repairs, depending on their category. The cars have no time limit but only mutual assistance between competitors is permitted. The competitors will meet up with their team on Thursday evening at the Hail camp, at the end of a new 428km special stage, which will be followed by a rest day on Friday. The Dakar 2025 will conclude on January 17 in the desert dunes of the Empty Quarter.
