Australia’s Daniel Sanders has won the 2025 Dakar Rally for Red Bull KTM . Spaniard Tosha Schareina took second place. Adrien Van Beveren gets his second podium in third.
Fun fact:
335 vehicles started the 47th Dakar Rally.
This included 134 motorbikes, 64 Ultimate class cars, 44 trucks, and more.
Only 175 vehicles completed Dakar, the 6th in Saudi Arabia.
77 bikes (including 67 Rally 2), 40 Ultimate cars, 1 Stock car, 21 Challengers, 23 SSVs and 13 trucks reached the final finishing line after covering the entire route.
Whilst we are sad that a Saffer did not take the win, we are super happy for KTM who enjoyed a great result with Aussie Bee keeper Daniel Sanders delivering them an emphatic victory…
He was a class act from the get go with a winning margin of almost nine minutes after fifty three hours on the bike.
Honda took the fight to Dakar with Tosha Schareina, Adrien Van Beveren and Ricky Brabec in the saddle but there was quite simply nothing that they could do to counter the orange rocket.
Honda did however paint the podium red with four of the top six riders in the factory HRC team.
We were all rooting for our South African riders and southern Africa was devastated when our two world champs Ross Branch and Bradley Cox were knocked out on a dark racing weekend starting the second stage of the race.
Bradley Cox crashed heavily just metres off the start line, you can see the vid on our socials. He was checked by medics and continued for almost 40km before calling it quits.
World champ Ross Branch had a big one at kilometre 48 and was choppered out.
That’s racing for you!
On that day, SA privateer, Aaron Mare got tongues wagging and put up a great, very fast fight, but the Honda riders eventually overhauled him with Brabec taking that stage.
Docherty and the Empty Quarter Victory:
SA’s Michael Docherty became the second Rally 2 rider to ever win a Dakar stage, since Moto GP star Danilo Petrucci in 2022. The Kempton Park born Dubai-based dune specialist Docherty led the day from start to finish in the empty quarter, a massive sea of oil lines and sand.
He took the win from Portuguese rider Rui Goncalves’ on a Sherco and factory KTM Rally 2 rookie rival Edgar Canet.
They don’t come tougher than this – remember, he broke a bone in his shoulder at the start of the rally.
More KTM Joy:
More good news for KTM is that the 19-year-old Dakar rookie, Spaniard Edgar Canet claimed the Rally 2 class win and a spot in the top ten.
Canet finished ahead of Tobias Ebster, and Romain Dumontier.
The biggest contest on the final day was in the Original by Motul class where a mere one minute separated Benjamin Melot and Emanuel Gyenes.
Gyenes eventually pipped his French rival at the post after Merlot made a rare navigational error…
Devastating!
Fantic mounted Sandra Gomez was the only female racing bike in the ’25 Dakar She finished in 43rd position and was in the saddle for a full fifteen hours longer than Sanders.
South African Racers:
The guys dug deep, Tough like biltong! We are in awe! Take a bow!
SA Bike finishers:
P14: Michael Docherty
P48: Dwain Barnard
P 82: Willem Avenant
Sadly, Aaron Mare ended up crashing in SS9. He was around 186km into the stage, when exiting a riverbed onto a rocky gravel track there was a big blind rock the same colour as the dirt. He only saw it when he hit, went over the bars and landed in more rocks.
No Quads this year, but Heger keeps the trophy for Polaris.
The RZRs driven by title holder Xavier de Soultrait and rookie Brock Heger led the general rankings from start to finish.
South African made Hilux bakkies take top two spots at Dakar 2025…
After a long, hard chase, Yazeed Al Rajhi and Timo Gottschalk from team Overdrive Racing took top honours, pipping South Africa’s Henk Lategan and Brett Cummings to the post by just 3 minutes and 57 seconds.
In an awesome display, Lategan and Cummings – part of Toyota Gazoo Racing (TGR) – led the chase across the Saudi Arabian landscape for a staggering nine stages, only to see victory slip away during the last two.
“It was a bittersweet race for us, to come all of this way, do two weeks of racing over thousands of kilometres, late nights, early mornings, and then to miss out by four minutes!” says Lategan.
“But to get onto the podium is fantastic. It’s our first podium and it’s a great achievement. It’s amazing what the team has done and what we could manage with this race.
“We’ll keep trying, we’ll keep pushing. We’ll improve the car, we’ll improve ourselves, we’ll gain more experience and we’ll come back stronger next year.”
It was tough this year, but our Saffers are even tougher.
These are our other finishers:
10th place Brian Baragwanath & Leonard Cremer. (Baragwanath used to race quads quite well…)
26th place Saood Variawa & Francois Cazalet.
62 William Battershill & Stuart Gregory. Usually on a bike, this is Stuarts sixth Dakar, first time navigating.
76 Puck Klaassen & Charan Moore. (Yup! That Charan, this year he navigated.)
100 Daniel Schroeder & Henry Köhne.
Another fun fact:
There is an SA round of the world rally championship coming to SA:
South Africa has been selected to host a round of the highly acclaimed World Rally-Raid Championship (W2RC) in May 2025.
The South African Safari Rally, which forms round three of the 2025 W2RC, will take place from 18 to 24 May 2025 in and around Sun City.
