The 2025 Dakar Rally has completed it's first week of racing and the competitors will settle down tomorrow when they get their first, and only, rest day. Stage five wasn't a cakewalk on their way to rest with over 400km of racing and a continuation of the brutal terrain and distance the organization keeps throwing at everyone.

Red Bull KTM Factory Racing continued its domination of the rally today with Luciano Benavides taking the stage win narrowly over Monster Energy Honda HRC Rally's Adrien VanBeveren after AVB was docked two minutes for a speeding penalty. Third on the day was Hero's Nacho Cornejo. 

In the overall rankings, KTM's Daniel Sanders still holds the lead even after opening the route today up front and alone. His speed and navigation was on point, keeping him in the lead as they head into rest day. That's even after he is currently docked eight minutes on today's time for speeding. Reports from the KTM camp indicate that Sanders had another ERTF (gps/nav) failure, causing him to not get notification that he was in a speed-controlled zone. 

Even with the penalty, Sanders holds more than seven minutes over Honda's Tosha Schareina and 17+ minutes over third place Ross Branch in the overall standings. AVB sits in fourth overall 18+ minutes back, and American's Skyler Howes rounds out the top five with a gap of essentially 20 minutes to the leader Sanders. Defending champ Ricky Brabec is right behind in sixth with 21 minutes to make up in the second week to defend his Dakar victory from 2024.

Rest day is welcomed, but we won't be taking the day off. More tomorrow from Dakar!

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Dakar Rally Daily is produced and edited by Jesse Ziegler, and hosted by Quinn Cody and Jesse Ziegler.