Dakar Rally 2025 Results: Speeding fines and roadbook woes affect stage 5

2025 Dakar Rally stage five results where birthday boy Luciano Benavides takes the day win as speeding fines and roadbook issues affect riders – Red Bull KTM’s Daniel Sanders extends 15 minute lead.

2024 Dakar Rally Stage 5 in a nutshell – Al Ula > Hail Special: 428km Liaison: 64km

The last day of week one at the 2025 Dakar Rally and the carrot dangled of a day off on Friday put a rocket up rider’s backsides today. Just one more ride and then a big sleep...
Race leader Daniel Sanders led the stage away on the Red Bull KTM and set the pace out front, opening the piste trying not to lose time to his rivals who were chasing his line in the dirt and knowing his lead need eating up.
Monster Energy Honda’s Tosha Schareina struggled to match Sanders ahead of him on the ground for the first half of the stage. But the Spaniard eventually caught the Australian, gaining time but that was off-set by Sanders’ 5:42 bonus time and the net result is the cat and mouse gamble yesterday hasn’t paid off for Schareina who lost more than he bargained.
Third and fourth place starters, Honda’s Adrien Van Beveren and Hero Motosports’ Jose Cornejo, also caught Sanders and joined in claiming the bonus points as a quartet headed for Hail (Ha'il).
AVB spearheaded the timesheets as the stage unfolded, duking it out with Ross Branch on the timesheets. The W2RC champion, Branch, was riding with Rally 2 leader (and eventually class day winner) Edgar Canet and Luciano Benavides further down the order.
Branch’s challenge faded towards the finish leaving Luciano to clock his best result of the race, placing P2.
Initially AVB was handed two minutes for speeding, giving Luciano the stage win on his birthday. But the results have been amended due to issues with the roadbooks and Van Beveren claims his sixth career stage win by 1:13.
We’ve taken a closer look at the digital roadbook issues here: Dakar digital roadbooks: are they working?
Fellow South American Cornejo was Hero Motosports’ top dog in third overall after an impressive ride – starting third to finish third is not easy. He clocked in 2:44 behind the stage winner.
Fourth and fifth went to Branch and Ricky Brabec respectively, both a couple of minutes further off the pace.
Daniel Sanders it is though who continues to impress with his confidence this Dakar. His sixth place was eventually settled after initailly copping eight minutes of speeding time was scrapped. Further roadbook issues for the KTM rider affected his speedo which accounts for the overspeed. KTM protested and race organisers restored his original time (along with Van Beveren).
After all that, 15 minutes lead is impressive at the end of a difficult week one for all riders. The second week promises more sand and the word in the camp is less chance to lose/gain time each day. We’ll see...
Edgar Canet topped the Rally 2 class again (fourth stage win in class for the rookie) to extend his lead with a P9 scratch finish. Michael Docherty got back on track with second in class, p11 overall with Jacob Argubright third and 14th. Canet now has a bigger lead than his KTM teammate Sanders does overall: 16:39 for the rookie.