Al-Attiyah stretches muscle to take first win, Lategan holds overall lead

Dacia driver Nasser Al-Attiyah bounced back from mechanical issues to win the fifth stage of the 2025 Dakar Rally on Thursday and climb up to fourth in the overall standings.

Having lost half an hour with a puncture and a broken rear suspension on Wednesday, the Qatari driver dominated the 428km test between Al-Ula and Ha’il to put himself firmly back in contention for the overall victory.

X-raid Mini driver Guerlain Chicherit set the early pace on a route made up largely of sand and dirt, while Ford’s Mattias Ekstrom also enjoyed a brief stint at the front after jumping to first position at the 87km mark.

But neither driver had an answer to five-time Dakar winner Al-Attiyah, who quickly began to pull away from the competition after taking the lead 173km into the stage.

Extending his advantage by almost seven minutes in the short 40km run between checkpoints eight and nine, the Qatar driver eventually reached the finish line with an impressive margin of 9m59s.

This was the first time a non-Toyota driver topped a stage in Dakar 2025, with all four previous stages having been won by either the factory team or its customer squad, Overdrive.

Behind Al-Attiyah, Ekstrom seemed set to finish second having retaken the spot from Toyota rival and overall leader Henk Lategan at the penultimate checkpoint. But both were leapfrogged at the very end by a charging Seth Quintero in another factory Hilux,  leaving them third and fourth in the final order and separated by just one minute.

Stage 4 winner Yazeed Al-Rajhi (Overdrive Toyota) had a rather lacklustre outing en route to fifth place, 11m13s down on Al-Attiyah.

Lucas Moraes drove his factory Toyota to sixth ahead of Ford’s Mitch Guthrie Jr in seventh, in what was a mixed day for the American manufacturer.

While both Ekstrom and Guthrie Jr fared well, Nani Roma suffered a head-on collision with MD Rally Sport driver Simon Vitse. The two-time Dakar champion was uninjured but his Raptor sustained heavy damage in the accident. 

Mini’s lead contender Chicherit also ran into trouble mid-way through the stage, dropping almost half an hour behind the leaders. He was provisionally classified 10th.

Going into the rest day in Ha’il on Friday, Lategan continues his stranglehold on the top spot in the overall standings, with his lead over Al-Rajhi extending to 10m24s.

Ekstrom holds third place in the best of the Fords, while Al-Attiyah is fourth and 25 minutes down on Lategan with seven stages still to run in the second week of Dakar.

Moraes, Guthrie Jr and Century’s Matthieu Serradori are next up in fifth, sixth and eighth respectively, all sitting within an hour of Lategan with half the rally still to run.

Dakar 2025 – Results after Stage 5 (Top 10)