Al-Attiyah counterattacks, new hope for Van Beveren

Little sand, a lot of stones and a total of 428 km of special awaited the Dakar 2025 competitors for the second part of the marathon stage this Thursday. Connecting Alula to Haïl was a challenge after an evening without mechanical assistance at the bivouac, with the reward of Friday’s rest day.

The roller coaster hitting Dacia in this 47th edition continues since the day after a difficult day, Nasser Al-Attiyah left with a knife between his teeth. Determined to make up part of his deficit in the general classification, the Qatari took the lead of the special from the fourth checkpoint. He then gave a real recital, never stopping increasing his lead.

At the finish, the five-time winner of the event signed his 49th stage victory – the first with Dacia – with just over ten minutes ahead of Mattias Ekström and Henk Lategan, separated by only a few seconds. He is now 25 minutes behind in the general classification, where he now occupies fifth place.

Further on, Nani Roma was the victim of an unusual accident. Starting out of the classification after his setbacks in the 48H time trial, he was unable to avoid a head-on collision with Simon Vitse, while the two men were looking for a checkpoint. The damage was significant to the machines but the crews were unhurt. Giniel de Villiers, for his part, let slip more than an hour after suffering yet another puncture which forced him to wait to recover a wheel.

While Nasser Al-Attiyah put on a show, the first two in the general classification battled, but Yazeed Al Rajhi logically paid the disadvantage of opening the road after his victory the day before. Henk Lategan took advantage of this to take him more than three minutes and thus consolidate his place as leader of the Dakar with a lead of 10’17.

Still third, Mattias Ekström maintained this gap, which remains at 20’54 before the rest day. On the French side, the day was more difficult than yesterday for Mathieu Serradori, who lost a quarter of an hour but remains firmly in the top 10.

Provisional general classification Cars

Van Beveren private de victoire

In the Motorcycle category, the day was above all marked by the offensive led by Adrien van Beveren. The Frenchman, sixth in the general classification this morning, led the special at full speed to take control halfway through and seemed well on his way to winning. But his first stage victory in this edition will wait, a two-minute penalty for speeding having deprived him of the scratch.

“I made a few small mistakes but in this maze it was complicated for everyone to navigate”he explains on the official Dakar website. “You have to be patient and precise, it’s not easy. I wasn’t able to express myself as I should have on the first stage, and that penalized me doubly because with the reversed order in the 48 hours flat, I started in front of my main opponents.”

“Then I fell twice at the start of the rally because I wanted to compensate, although I don’t usually fall often. Today I didn’t try to make a strategy, I wanted to have fun and that’s been the case so far, we’re doing a Dakar on rocks, I hope we’ll have more sand afterwards. But hey, the terrain is like that and we adapt, we accept. as best we can.”

This is how Luciano Benavídes won with 47 seconds ahead of the Frenchman and 1’31 over Nacho Cornejo. For Adrien van Beveren, it is still an excellent operation in the general classification, with a rise to fourth place, less than 20 minutes from the leader who is still Daniel Sanders.

Sanders penalized

Daniel Sanders lost big even though he had managed his stage well.

Photo de: KTM Images

The Australian thought he had completed this ideal first week with a new performance of choice by perfectly limiting the gaps on the fastest of the day, except that he lost a large part of the benefit of his excellent day due to a penalty of 8’10 which he received for a total of three speeding offenses in limited areas.

With the rest day now looming on Friday, the KTM rider remains the boss of the category at this stage, but the lead he could have had has melted with this sanction. Here he is in the lead with only 6’52 ahead of Tosha Schareina who wasn’t asking for that much. Ross Branch remains third, at 17’38.

Provisional general classification Motorcycles