Dakar 2025 – Henk Lategan offers the prologue, Sébastien Loeb in ambush |

Dakar 2025 ranking – Prologue:

• Henk Lategan and Brett Cummings (Toyota) remember the followers of the Dakar fondly. The South African tandem won the Prologue of the Dakar 2025, contested this Friday January 3 in Bisha (Saudi Arabia) over a 29 km course.
• Forfeited for the 2024 Dakar due to a shoulder injury, Henk Lategan let his co-driver Brett Cummings leave with Guy Botterill at Toyota (6th). Back after a year of absence, Lategan has lost none of his driving skills, as evidenced by his title of South African Rally Raid Champion in 2024.
• The Prologue is only of relative importance, because the times do not count for the general classification. This first special aims solely to determine the starting order for stage 1, the 10 fastest having the choice of their position tomorrow among the Top 10. With its 413 km of special on Saturday, the first stage will directly influence the positions for the formidable 48 hours on Sunday and Monday, which totals 947 km.
• Three brands appear in the first three places in this Prologue. Mattias Ekström and Emil Bergkvist place their new Ford Raptor T1+ in 2nd position, only one second behind Lategan! The American 4×4 is therefore performing well for its Dakar debut.
• On the Dacia side, the advantage goes to Nasser Al-Attiyah-Édouard Boulanger. The three-time world rally raid (W2RC) champion set the 3rd time, 20 seconds behind Lategan. The Qatari drove 13 seconds faster than his teammate Sébastien Loeb (6th at 33 seconds). The differences are very small and in no way suggest a clear hierarchy at this stage.
• Among the surprises in the top 10, we note the 4th place of Rokas Baciuska and Oriol Mena (Toyota). The Lithuanian driver is a three-time world rally raid champion (twice in SSV, once in Challenger) and is discovering the Dakar in the premier category, Ultimate.
• In the French clan, co-driver François Cazalet is in 9th place alongside South African Saood Variawa (Toyota), only 19 years old. Arriving late at the bivouac, Guerlain Chicherit (Mini, associated with Alex Winocq) recorded the 10th time, 42 seconds behind Lategan.
• You have to go far down the rankings to find any trace of two favorites. Carlos Sainz-Lucas Cruz (Ford) are 22nd but only lost 1'14''. Guillaume de Mévius and Mathieu Baumel (Mini) spent more than 4 minutes, enough to relegate them beyond 30th place! The Belgian driver, 2nd in the 2024 Dakar, suffered a puncture.

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