Daniel Sanders is half-way to achieving his dream of being only the second Australian to triumph at the Dakar Rally, but the motorcyclist will go into the great race's rest day with a reduced lead after being hit with penalties for speed-limit violations.
The 428km fifth stage between Al'Ula and rocky Ha'il had looked to have been a huge success for the 30-year-old on Thursday when he made light of the disadvantage of leading off the stage by actually increasing his lead over his nearest pursuers to over quarter-of-an-hour.
But Yarra Valley's 'Chucky' later had more than half of his advantage wiped out when it was ruled his Red Bull KTM had exceeded specified speed limits on the route three times, leaving him whacked with an eight-minute penalty.
🚀 When speed meets sand 🔥#Dakar2025 #DakarInSaudi pic.twitter.com/QdPpPCeHln
— DAKAR RALLY (@dakar) January 9, 2025
His advantage therefore was reduced from 15min 2sec to 7:02 ahead of Spain's Honda rider Tosha Schareina, although he still has a 17:38 lead over Botswana's third-placed world rally-raid champ Ross Branch.
While the time penalties meant Sanders ended up 12th on the stage, his Argentine teammate Luciano Benavides took the victory for the day in just under five hours to move up to seventh overall after over 30 hours of racing across seven days in the Saudi Arabian desert.
Frenchman Adrien van Beveren had originally been awarded the stage win, but like Sanders, he was given a speeding penalty.
Another irritating development for Sanders was to suffer problems with his bike's navigation system over the final 40km, having also had trouble on stage three.
"I'm just disappointed, but glad it happened at the end of the stage when I was with other riders, otherwise I would have been stuck," he said.
"I felt good all day. There were a couple of little mistakes in some fast areas, staying too far to one side and missing the main way. The other guys caught up with me pretty quickly after the refuelling.
"Other than that, the body and bike are good and we're happy to make it to the rest day. I have a lot of experience and many years here now, I just know what to do and how to control it."
No Australian has won the Dakar since his fellow motorcyclist and former teammate Toby Price, victor in 2016 and 2019.
Around 15km into the stage we had high temperatures in the car and had to manage that by keeping our top speed to 130km/h 🥵 feel like we lost a lot of time because of it, but I'm glad we could at least manage the situation given how much carnage is out there!
— Toby Price (@tobyprice87) January 7, 2025
Price is now making his debut in the cars category and was lying in 26th place overall in his Toyota going into the rest day, a big jump up after his previous day's calamity when he and co-pilot Sam Sunderland had lost five hours.
Five-time champion Nasser Al-Attiyah was stripped of the cars' stage win because of a 10-minute penalty for a missing spare wheel, allowing American Seth Quintero to earn the win by a mere second from the Qatari star.
South African Henk Lategan continues to lead in the cars, his fourth-place on the stage stretching his overall advantage on second-placed Yazeed Al Rajhi to 10 minutes.
The second half of the race begins on Saturday after the rest day.
