Mini overhauls Toyota as Ford, Dacia lag behind

Guerlain Chicherit took a surprise victory for X-raid Mini in the opening stage of the 2025 Dakar Rally in Saudi Arabia after a long battle with Toyota rivals.

Frenchman Chicherit was quick from the get-go in Saturday’s 499km test around Bisha, establishing an early advantage of over a minute in his Mini JCW Rally 3.0i.

Chicherit was chased hard by a slew of drivers from Toyota’s factory squad and its satellite Overdrive team, with as many as four Hilux T1+s directly running behind him in the standings.

By the 151km mark, both Lucas Moraes and Saood Variava had leapfrogged Chicherit’s Mini, with the latter also dropping behind Guy Botterill at the next checkpoint.

However, the Mini driver struck back in the next phase of the stage and began to trade the top spot with Moraes, who cemented his position as Toyota’s lead contender.

Chicherit started the final section of the stage trailing Moraes by 18 seconds, but made rapid gains for his eighth career stage win in Dakar and Mini’s first at the event since 2021.

Moraes elected to strategically stop the car for several minutes in order to put himself in a more favourable starting position for the 48-hour chrono stage covering Sunday and Monday, dropping to eighth in the order.

That allowed his Toyota stablemate Seth Quintero to move up to second, 50 seconds behind Chicherit, with Variava rounding out the top three in his Hilux.

The late change of positions elevated Martin Prokop in the privateer Jipocar Ford to fourth, ahead of Cristina Gutierrez in the best of the Dacia Sandriders and Mini rider Joao Ferreira to sixth.

New Ford recruit Carlos Sainz overtook Guillaume de Mevius, who started first on the road, but chose to slow down on purpose to boost his prospects for Stage 2.

Dropping to the lower regions of the top 30 at one point, the four-time Dakar winner climbed back up to finish seventh in the best of the factory Raptors, 7m58s down on stage winner Chicherit.

Former two-wheel star Toby Price finished a solid ninth with Overdrive Toyota, behind de Moraes, while Prologue winner Henk Lategan made it five Hilux entries inside the top 10.

A number of leading drivers finished out of position, including Ford duo Mattias Ekstrom and Nani Roma, who were classified 16th and 18th respectively.

Dacia’s Nasser Al-Attiyah and Sebastien Loeb deliberately stopped in the final run to the finish and were classified 20th and 24th respectively, both dropping more than 10 minutes to the frontrunners. They had been running a more representative 10th and 16th at the previous checkpoint.

Following the opening special, drivers will cover a mammoth distance of 947km over a two-day long marathon stage where no external assistance will be allowed.

Dakar 2025 – Results after Stage 1 (Top 10):