The Dakar Rally has been held in several countries since its inaugural edition in 1979, but no driver had managed to lift the Touareg trophy on home soil until Yazeed Al-Rajhi this year.
The Saudi driver won an atypical 2025 event in which a number of favourites fell by the wayside early on, with Carlos Sainz Sr and Sebastien Loeb the most high-profile departures.
Emerging winner in the Ultimate class in front of his home crowd is easily the biggest achievement in the sporting career of Al-Rajhi, one of the country's richest people.
His passion for motorsport is deep-rooted, having started competing in local rallies in the Middle East in 2007 and made the leap to international level rallying in 2014.
Since his debut in 2015, when he recorded one stage win, Al-Rajhi has racked up 11 appearances in the Dakar.
His previous best result was third in 2022, curiously one of the years in which he never topped an individual stage. Last year, he was leading the overall standings until his car went airborne in a spectacular accident in the new 48-hour stage.
Outside of motor racing, Al-Rajhi is also an entrepreneur. Each week he visits one of his various companies, be it coffee shops where he holds half the shares, the family-run Al-Rajhi Bank, the Berain water company that sponsors Dakar, or the steel business that accounts for 80% of the steel trade in Saudi Arabia.
For this reason, he takes advantage of any time he can get in Dakar to answer at least 20 emails a day, with his co-driver Timo Gottschalk helping him manage the 25,000 people he employs.
Al-Rajhi discovered that money wasn't everything when it came to winning. Despite having amassed a huge fortune, he spends his days going to the office in the morning - as long as he's not in his Toyota Hilux entered by the customer Overdrive Racing team.
"We have made a lot of records today: the first Saudi driver to win and also in the last twenty-five years no private team beat a factory team but we did it this time," he told reporters including Autosport.
"Also, it's the first time there is a winner on the Dakar from the same country in which it is raced, with a Saudi guy winning a Saudi Dakar. I've been waiting for this day for a long time.
"I think the next time will not be easy for other Saudi drivers who want to win the Dakar Rally. I needed a lot of time to do it, we need a lot of time together to do it, it's not easy.
"I think we will keep this record for a long time. It's like when Saudi Arabia beat Argentina in the [2022] World Cup."
Thanks to his wealth, Al-Rajhi is thinking about the future of Saudi motorsport, and has a challenge for young hopefuls who want to try their luck in the local desert. Juicy prizes of up to 2.5 million euros are offered, just for finishing on the podium, although the ultimate goal is for future generations to succeed him in winning Dakar.
But to inspire the next generation of Saudi rally drivers, he had to win Dakar first. To achieve that target this year, he learned from his mistakes and stopped going flat-out all the time.
Al-Rajhi has also gained a very special follower in the form of Sainz Sr. He revealed that "Carlos helped me win" by sharing advice over the phone on the eve of the final stage.
"Yesterday I said to him, 'What do you think? Can I call you?'" said Al-Rajhi. "And then he called me, and he helped me a lot. I said I wanted to be a winner, like him."
The next day, he duly followed in the footsteps of four-time Dakar conqueror Sainz to add his own name to the list of event winners.
