2025 Dakar Rally stage four results: Daniel Sanders and Tosha Schareina play a cat and mouse game for the win and the Red Bull KTM rider extends his overall lead to 13 minutes.

2024 Dakar Rally Stage 4 in a nutshell – El Henakiyah > Al Ula Special: 415km Liaison: 173km

Stage three winner Lorenzo Santolino had the honour of leading out the bivouac into a 173km road ride for a 07:50am stage start this morning on his Sherco. It was a cold run for everyone with Santo up and out the bivouac at 5:15am and most the riders dressed like mums at a winter motocross meeting.

The story of the day was the rapid progress of riders starting later (mainly Daniel Sanders and Tosha Schareina) gaining chunks of time on technical terrain with some very challenging navigation. That, and the fact the other podium contenders all gaffed together, making a mistake which could cost them dearly come next week. 

As the first half of a marathon stage it was also a day which needed care not to “fuck” your bike – learn how rookie Edgar Canet got on with notion that below…

Cat and mouse

Daniel Sanders and Tosha Schareina, starting 17th and 18th respectively, rattled through the rocks to soak up the physical disadvantage to claim time on those in front by “staying on your game” with navigation but taking advantage of the lines in the dirt.

Further back a guy called Mason Klein (remember him?!) was refreshed with a new engine this morning and ran as scratch stage leader for a while, scrapping for the stage podium which included Nacho Cornejo also having his best stage on the Hero.

When Klein’s challenge collapsed, and Nacho’s nipped up, it was a fight to the final timing beam which Sanders won by just 15 seconds from Schareina.

But times don’t tell the story as Schareina could have won it but elected to have a breather and wait a while, allowing Sanders the honour of the win and to lead the stage tomorrow.

2025 Dakar Rally stage 4 results (full classification below):

Al Ula region is known for its historical significance (humans have been here forever), the landscape and for sending the rally through some amazing canyons with rocky terrain. Weather conditions further north in Saudi Arabia can be damper in the winter, there are even some green bits here. The desert was damp in places today, producing nice dirt to ride and a contrast to the super-soft sand on previous stages.

Lorenzo Santolino quickly found his time eaten up by those starting later thanks to a dodgy roadbook. The Sherco rider was jforced to wait to be joined by Honda’s Ricky Brabec to carry on, Ross Branch on the Hero and Skyler Howes also joined them on the Honda.

The quartet ploughed on with Santolino dropping off when the glitches continued leaving Brabec to amass time bonuses at 5m:30s. It didn’t help the American or his running mates in the end, however, after a “huge blunder” just 15km from the finish which cost all of them a heap of time.

The ’24 winner is now 29 minutes behind the leader: “I set a decent pace and spent most of the stage at the front, but I made a huge blunder with 15 kilometres to go and that was it for me. If anything makes me happy, it's that I'm still in the race and my bike is still in one piece. That's rally-raids for you… One minute you're doing an amazing job and the next you're losing the Dakar.”

Costly mistake

In the light of the first week supposedly being harder than week two, which in theory means it’ll be harder to gain time next week, world champion Branch says: “We needed to make it happen today, today was the last day to make a big difference and we didn't do that but it is what it is let's see what we can do next week.”

Hello again Mason!

Mason Klein made a fresh start this morning with a new engine in the Kove after a few mechanical issues so far this Dakar, posting the fastest times overall and leading for a time.

Since bursting on the scene and immediately showing he has a raw talent for rally racing, Klein went from being touted as a factory KTM rider to the doldrums and no ride at all.

In this, at times, shallow world of motorsport it felt like this was one talent which just needed a bit more nurturing. Or he had the wrong passport or something.

Picked up by Kove last Dakar and now a factory rider again, Mason has certainly been busy with his mechanical skills developing the Chinese bike but today showed the riding talent is still there, even if the wheels came off later in the stage and he dropped time again.

Fired-up Aussie

Predictably, a fired-up Aussie (after yesterday’s shenanigans with his roadbook - link) was fast out the blocks today. Daniel Sanders started down in 17th place and got the old enduro elbows out for a dust-up, battling through the ‘slower’ riders and quickly making time gains.

He didn’t need to go nuts, with an overall rally lead of 6m51s he has a cushion. But the KTM rider looks super-confident this year and doesn’t seem in the mood for letting up any slack to his rivals. Like everyone, he knows only too well things can happen in this race and they can lose time in a blink.

Which is partly why it’s puzzling Tosha Schareina elected to play cat and mouse, stopping close to the finish for a couple of minutes to allow Sanders to win the stage by 15 seconds.

It remains to be seen if the tactic pays off for the Honda rider who will still start second tomorrow and arguably threw away as much as he’ll gain with a one place later start position.

Maybe he’s not as confident leading out front as Sanders says he is: “It’s always good because I just focus on myself. It’s what I did in Morocco. It’s good because you can concentrate on what you’re doing, not worry about the lines and be 100% focused on the roadbook.”

Shoutout to Svitko

Stefan Svitko seemingly has been racing the Dakar forever. 16 years in a row for the Slovakian who stands as the most experienced rider in the race this year.

The 42-year-old won a stage back in 2016 and spans the eras in the bikes at Dakar having battled with the likes of Coma, Price, Barreda and Sunderland.

He’s still at it and this year is currently sitting 14th overall and, excluding Bradley Cox in the BAS KTM team, is the leading privateer in his one-man squad.

Rally 2 – “I fucked my tyre”

We haven’t forgotten Rally 2, the most populated category for bikes at Dakar, it’s just there’s so much else to talk about today.

Classification leader Edgar Canet caused a bit of a hold-up today as he too suffered some digital roadbook “glitches” ahead of the start – like yesterday with teammate Daniel Sanders and Shercos Sanolino who also suffered today but was awarded time back.

Luckily for the Spaniard it was ahead of the special and allowed the organisers to spend 15 minutes fixing it – time which then knocked on to all following riders after Edgar’s eighth place start position.

The drama didn’t end there for the young Spaniard in his first Dakar who says he “fucked” his rear tyre in the rocky section and had to do some running repairs after the stage with tape and cable ties.

This being a marathon stage he has to hope it is not too fucked to last the 428km scheduled for tomorrow before he sees his KTM crew. There’s a precedent here with Toby Price famously bush crafting his split rear tyre in 2021, back when the marathon stages were first introduced. It lasted the second day like this...

Toby #2

Tobias Ebster has stepped up into Rally 2 this year and is in contention for a podium at the very least after today posting P6 scratch and the class win. That pushes him a little closer to leader Canet with the KTM pair sitting 3m:24s apart.

Frenchman Neels Theric clocked third in class today for a maiden podium for the Kove Rally Team while Michael Docherty had a tough day and dropped time on his rivals though still sits third overall in clas.

Navigation was a “bit tricky ”

Check out the mid-stage GPS trace of the riders today (below) and you can see what the mean when they say, navigation was a “bit tricky”. This image is a little misleading because the GPS trace tends to draw straight lines but the zig-zagging shows different lines taken as riders try and find the invisible waypoints in the desert.

You can trace it every day here on the Dakar website and it makes interesting viewing if you scroll back, if nothing else to look at who went the wrong way and missed waypoints. 

That’s not far (or fair), is it?

Some of the distances this year at Dakar don’t seem so wild in comparison to previous editions – 415km of special today is a medium kinda distance for Dakar.

This is day one of a marathon stage which means for the bikes at least it is one, long 843km test (if you add tomorrow’s 428km SSP to the tally).

Marathon stages mean the riders have 30 minutes to work on their own bikes this evening in the Al Ula bivouac and can’t change tyres or mousses (one hour for Rally 2 competitors). They all sleep together also in big tents.

Interestingly the four-wheel categories have all night to work on their machines on the marathon stage, no restrictions on helping each other (no-one has help from service crews), and they carry spare tyres…who says the car drivers have it easy then?

Some riders have already changed engines (not the top guys it must be added). Each night the organisers publish the list of daily penalties and, until to stage four, four riders have swapped in new motors including Mason Klein on the Kove.

The Al Ula bivouac is also immediately at the finish of stage four, and the start of stage 5, so there’s no time/energy/sleep lost on a liaison.

2025 Dakar Rally provisional classification after stage 4:

Today’s win puts to bed the lost time yesterday (and some) for Sanders leaving the KTM rider with a 13m:26s lead in the general classification over Schareina.

Branch is the Hero meat in the Honda sandwich in third but that gap has grown significantly to 24:10. Honda’s trio of Howes fourth at 27:01, Brabec fifth at 29:13 and Van Beveren sixth, 29′26″ down are the podium contenders and with Pablo Quintanilla in P7 that is five HRC bikes in the top seven.

Rally 2

Stage 4 complete results: 

Photo Credit: Red Bull | Marcin Kin | Marcelo Maragni + A.S.O. | DPPI | J. Delfosse | C. Lopez | A. Vincent + Edo Photo