2025 Dakar Rally results from Stage 2, the 48hr Chrono (part 2) – Red Bull KTM’s Daniel Sanders plays it hard and smart for 12-minute lead ahead of Skyler Howes as Ricky Brabec drops the ball.

2024 Dakar Rally Stage 2 in a nutshell – Bisha > Bisha Special: 947km Liaison: 45km

53 kilometres short of a 1000, 11 hours, 12 minutes and 13 seconds of riding…it’s all in a day’s work at Dakar. A shower and some food awaits the riders having completed the “48hr Chrono” stage two over two days riding.

For the first time in eight years, Daniel Sanders has won three consecutive stages on the bounce (the prologue, stage one and two) for an impressive race lead of 12m:36s at this early point.

Skyler Howes takes over second spot after a smart Chrono stage to spearhead the Honda onslaught behind the Red Bull KTM rider. Hero Motorsport’s Ross Branch lies third overall, four seconds behind Howes and eight seconds ahead of Tosha Schareina in a tight fight for the podium. What happened to Ricky Brabec? You might well ask.

2025 Dakar Rally provisional classification after stage 2 (last two columns are penalties and bonus time accum.):

Two minutes becomes 13 for pissed-off Brabec

Part two of the Chrono stage was a story of time lost for both Ross Branch and previously second-placed rider, 2024 winner Ricky Brabec. There’s a long way still to race but heavy time losses today saw Branch and Brabec finish 10 minutes and almost 13 minutes respectively behind Sanders for their morning’s work.

From Brabec’s side, he points out a broken exhaust (dented we suspect) limited the power and top speed of his CRF450 Rally machine compared to those around him.

The American also made it clear the Chrono stage didn’t really work for him: “I feel like this Chrono thing is kind of a waste… I mean, all the hard work we did yesterday just kind of went down the drain.

“I’m not too happy right now, but, you know, it is what it is. We’ll push to the end and see what we can do, it’s only stage two. There’s a lot of racing left, a lot of kilometres left. We’ll see what happens.”

In the end it was a case of Sanders starting each of these last two days from behind and with the clear goal to catch the riders out front which made the difference.

The tactic worked well yesterday for Brabec also but today, crucially for the rally lead, riders left in finishing order yesterday. This is where Sanders played it smart last night in watching the clock to not arrive first at the final time check. That meant a P7 start this morning for Chucky while Brabec was up front, second away, one minute behind his teammate Tosha Schareina at 7am.

The Aussie shark chased down the Ricky and Tosha who struggled with some of the navigation on the stage and gained six minutes on Ricky.

It’s not really clear why Ricky wasn’t able to still run at the pace of Sanders or his teammates once he was caught. Dropping off the pace, Ricky was not  holding his own out front like yesterday riding in the group. Whatever the reason, he lost out and looks pissed tonight.

“I’m just gonna jump in some ice and shrink a little bit...”

🛁+🧊+📱= recovery time for stage winner Daniel Sanders 🥶#Dakar2025 #DakarInSaudi pic.twitter.com/s7iieUcXMp

— DAKAR RALLY (@dakar) January 6, 2025

Will the see-saw affect Chucky tomorrow?

The organisers try to stop the traditional see-saw effect of riders leading one day and getting hampered the next. New and different rules in recent Dakars including bonus times awarded for leading help.

Days one and two also forced their throttle hands to keep on because the start order the following days (stages one and two) were both reverse order.

But start order goes back to normal tomorrow with stage two winner Sanders set to open while Brabec will start eight.

Sanders knows this of course and say it was his choice to keep on the gas to the finish line today: “The rest of the guys will be starting back and I’ll have to open the next stage. It was good to get the stage win, but it was on to me to choose whether to win today in the end. I’m committed and ready to take on the challenge tomorrow.”

Sketchy and fun

Speaking about the last near 1000 kilometres of riding, the Australian says it was sketchy at times but fun: “There are time when you’re four or five wide looking for a waypoint and it can get a bit sketchy, that needs to be looked at. But it was also pretty fun riding together. At one point we all got stuck on a dune. I looked across and there was about 15 of us all stuck which pretty funny.”

Rally rookie impressive

Meanwhile in Rally 2 category the 19-year-old rookie (we haven’t got tired of pointing that out yet) Edgar Canet lies 10th overall and in the lead of the class. “947 kilometres is the longest stage I have ever raced for sure but I feel good, I didn’t crash, I didn’t get lost for any amount of time and looking forward to tomorrow.” Said the newest KTM factory rider.

A crash on stage one doesn’t seem to have halted Michael Docherty too much as he went fastest in the first half of the Chrono stage and backed that up with the class stage win and P10 scratch. The South African is 13th overall, 10 minutes down on Canet overall and just ahead of third placed Rally 2 rider Tobias Ebster in P14.  

Speaking of “rookies”

You might be interested to know two former, two-times winners of the Dakar, Toby Price and Sam Sunderland, are currently fourth overall in the cars and are admitting they didn’t give enough credit to the four-wheel drivers until now.

Despite co-driver Sam admitting he is having a problem saying out loud, not just reading, the roadbook to help his driver, the pair sit 30’’ behind Nasser Al Attiyah in the fight for the podium and with a hell of a list of more experienced drivers behind them.

Stage three (how is it only stage three already?!) finally heads north away from Bisha to El Henakiyah but, in light of some storms in the region, organisers have shortened a planned 496km special to 327km. Storms make life hard for everyone and after thos last two days, plus the next marathon stage just two days away, the organisers have been kind for once.

2025 Dakar Rally stage 2 results (provisional):

*Results will update in full once official

Photo Credit: Edo Bauer + A.S.O. | DPPI + Marcin Kin | Marcelo Maragni | Flavien Duhamel Red Bull Content Pool