Sanders leads

Dakar Rally: KTM takes fourth stage win

Luciano Benavides(Bild: Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

Luciano Benavides won the fifth stage of the Dakar Rally in Saudi Arabia on Thursday, securing the fourth stage win for the KTM team. 

The brother of two-time Dakar winner Kevin Benavides won the 428-kilometer stage from Alula to Ha'il, 47 seconds ahead of French Honda rider Adrien van Beveren. His KTM colleague Daniel Sanders is still the overall leader among the motorcycles, but lost some of his lead.

The Australian, who has already won three stages, picked up an eight-minute time penalty on Thursday and is now only 7:02 minutes ahead of Spanish Honda rider Tosha Schareina. Upper Austrian Tobias Ebster, who had finished fifth in the previous day's stage, crossed the finish line 20:32 minutes behind the stage winner in 18th place and is still 13th, 1:18:23 hours behind the winner. Defending champion Ricky Brabec in sixth place is 21:01 minutes behind.

Al-Attiyah misses out on stage win due to time penalty
Among the cars, the leading South African Henk Lategan has extended his lead. The Toyota driver now leads by 10:17 minutes ahead of his brand colleague and local hero Yazeed Al-Rajhi. Five-time Dakar winner Nasser Al-Attiyah had dominated the stage, but was given a ten-minute time penalty due to a missing spare tire and thus narrowly missed out on a maiden victory for a Dacia. Al-Attiyah was ultimately just one second behind the day's winner Seth Quintero (Toyota).