Al Henakiyah – Al Ula Stage: 415km, liaison: 173km
Local hero Yazeed Al Rajhi and Timo Gottschalk shifted into top gear to dominate the fourth stage of Dakar 2025, the first part of a marathon section over two days without any service, although teams may repair their own cars with assistance from other crews.
Starting 18th on Wednesday morning, the Saudi driver powered his Overdrive Toyota Hilux into the lead which he held from start to finish, chased all the way by the overall rally leader Henk Lategan and Brett Cummings in their Toyota Gazoo Racing SA Hilux.
Lategan, starting 13th on the road, initially dropped to fifth before clawing back time to run second after km 192 and still leads the event overall, even after shedding 23 seconds to Al Rajhi who is 6 min 54 seconds adrift of the overall top spot.
The fight for the top spot took a dramatic swing when Nasser Al-Attiyah was forced to stop his Dacia Sandrider and lost over half an hour and sat seventh in the general classification, but he refused to give up: “We didn’t have many problems —just one! Actually, we stopped once for a puncture and then again because we broke a rear suspension arm. We had to wait for Cristina, who gave us hers, and then we repaired it and got going again… What else could we do? That’s just how it is. Now the car is fine and we’ll have to adapt tomorrow and next week. My only option is to attack.”
Juan Cruz Jacopini and Daniel Oliveras brought their Overdrive Toyota home in third, 10:45 behind Al Rajhi and ten seconds ahead of the Jipocar Ford Raptor of Martin Prokop/Viktor Chytka, who recovered well from a torrid Tuesday.
Denis Krotov/Konstantin Zhiltsov ended fifth in their X-Raid Mini, but are out of the rally having crashed on Tuesday and are running as “Dakar Experience”, a category for teams that have retired but wish to continue to race.
Mathieu Serradori and Loic Minaudier were the first of three Century Racing vehicles in the top 10, a first for the South African team, with Marcelo Gastaldi and co-driver Adrien Metge finishing in eighth and team engineer Brian Baragwanath and Leonard Cremer rounding out the top ten.
Seventh and ninth belonged to the M-Sport Ford team with Mitch Guthrie leading home Mattias Ekstrom in ninth.
Yesterday’s Hero ( a song by John Paul Young for those of you old enough to remember) Saood Variawa opened the stage and plummeted down the order, while Guy Botterill/Dennis Murphy, picked up two punctures within the first 50km and had to tip-toe over the rocks for the next 300km. Worse, with no service, he has to try and beg, steal or borrow some tyres, or take on the 492km of second leg of the marathon stage without any spare tyres.
Toby Price and his co-driver, Sam Sunderland, stopped at km 324 and had to wait for their service truck. Heading into this marathon stage, the duo of two-time Dakar winners on motorbikes were holding sixth place in the overall standings which was a tough blow for the pair!
In the motorbikes race, after the prologue and the first two stages, Daniel Sanders claimed his fourth win of the year on Wednesday making him the first motorbike rider to win four specials in a single edition since American Ricky Brabec achieved the feat in 2021. This also marks the seventh career victory for “Chucky.”
Overall classification: (Provisional)
- H. Lategan/B. Cummings Toyota Gazoo Racing SA Hilux 23:36:24
- Y. Al Rajhi/T. Gottschalk Overdrive Toyota Hilux +6:54
- M. Ekstrom/E. Bergkvist M-Sport Ford Raptor +21:40
- M. Serradori/L. Minaudier Century Racing CR-7 +30:25
- L. Moraes/A. Monlean Toyota Gazoo Racing Hilux +33:25
- M. Guthrie/K. Walch M-Sport Ford Raptor +34:09
- N. Al-Attiyah/E. Boulanger Dacia Sandrider +35:53
- J. Yacopini/D. Oliveras Overdrive Toyota Hilux +41:10
- J. Ferreira/F. Palmino X-Raid Mini JCW +1:11:07
- U. Mannama/R. Lepik Overdrive Toyota Hilux +1:17:36
