The 2025 Dakar Rally began it's second grueling week today with the completion of a masssive stage six. Competitors covered more than 800km, racing across varied desert terrain and obstacles. The race has really begun to take it's toll on the field with Kevin Benavides opting not to start the second week before the stage began, and defending W2RC World Champion Ross Branch, leader of the Hero Motorsports team, crashing out of the race today. Branch made it to medical assistance and has cleared all serious injury checks, but was certainly banged up. Likewise, Brad Cox suffered an early crash on the stage, taking him out of his first RallyGP effort after an impressive race so far. 

Monster Energy Honda HRC Rally team's Ricky Brabec sprinted to the stage win today seconds ahead of his teammate and stage five's winner Adrien Van Beveren. AVB led the entire course today physically, capturing all the available bonus time and managed to also keep up front on time until the very end when Brabec edged him off the top spot. Third place went to Hero's Nacho Cornejo, a great ride in honor of his  teammate exiting the race. 

Overall, Red Bull KTM Factory Racing's Daniel Sanders continues his solid stance at the top of the standings, giving up some time today to competitors in the overall rankings, but not enough to move him from the top step. Honda's Tosha Schareina sits in second, 11:46 behind Sanders, and Van Bevern is in third, 19:11 out of the lead. 

More from a nasty stage seven tomorrow as this race starts to become out of reach for many. 

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