2025 Dakar Rally results from Stage 3 where Lorenzo Santolino led a dramatic finish for a maiden stage win on the Sherco as race leader Daniel Sanders suffers digital roadbook failure.

2024 Dakar Rally Stage 3 in a nutshell – Bisha > El Henakiyah Special: 327km Liaison: 466km

The naysayers were right, weren’t they? Those new, fangled digital roadbooks are only going to cause problems.

And so it proved on stage three of the 2025 Dakar Rally where Daniel Sanders suffered heavy time loses due to his electronic roadbook failing, forcing him to back off his own pace, follow others (who made their own navigation mistakes) and initially leaving him with a 23rd placed finish, almost 15 minutes off the pace – later amended to just under 10 minutes deficit and 17th for an overall lead of 6:51

It took some of the shine away from an otherwise very competitive stage which saw five different leaders in the first 150 kilometres on corrected time including Sanders, Sherco’s Lorenzo Santolino, BAS KTM’s Bradley Cox, Hero’s Ross Branch and Honda’s Tosha Schareina.

Stage three offered varied and technical terrain, tough rocky going in the first 100km or so, some wet dirt which was “great to ride” said Skyler Howes but not ideal for the leaders who laid down beautiful, clear lines for other to follow.

As the race ramped up it looked like Cox could make history for South Africa and become the first father and son stage winners (his dad Alfie winning back in the Africa days). But Cox explained he knew he’d lost the day win after a late navigation mistake in a river cost him time and he was also later docked six minutes for speeding, dropping him to P14.

Honda sharks were looming too as the 327km stage neared its end and Skyler Howes pulled clear of the pack to finish physically first and take third overall. His teammate Ricky Brabec, making amends for mechanical issues on stage two, rallied hard today also to claim second place with a trademark strong ride right to the finishline.

However, it was Lorenzo Santolino who seized his chance to make his own history with a maiden stage win onboard the Sherco. The Spaniard topped the time sheets during the stage and pushed on for the finish with a margin of four minutes over Brabec and Howes nine seconds further back.

2025 Dakar Rally stage 3 results (full results below):

Sherco’s boy

This isn’t the first time Sherco have won a Dakar stage but it will feel like it for Lorenzo Santolino who claims his personal maiden Dakar day crown.

It’s actually the sixth stage win for Sherco believe it or not with Micky Metge claiming their last stage in South America five years ago and their first coming in 2010 by David Casteu (the team manager until recently and who’s racing again this year at the age of 50).

Dogged in his preparation and approach, winner of other rallies and of course we want to tell you a former enduro rider, Santolino has earned this one. 

“It was an almost perfect stage for me. I attacked in the rocks at the start to catch up with Pablo before we reached a fast plateau in a zone with more technical navigation where we rode together. I stayed focused all the time and attacked in front of him in the last hundred kilometres. I felt good on the bike, it was a good stage.” Lorenzo explained.

Digital roadbook like the assistant referee in football

To say the digital roadbooks are not universally appreciated in the bikes category would be an understatement. Long since favoured in the four-wheelers, they are now mandatory on the bikes and not everyone is a fan.

But they are not without problems and many said something like this would happen as the bikes battle through the desert relying on an electrical feed to function.

Ironically, Sanders was our guide to these new roadbooks: How Dakar Rally Digital Roadbooks Work

“I couldn’t navigate”

Easier to use and manage than the old mechanically fed scrolls of paper, they also prove difficult to read at times in the sun and the dust. Plus, quite obviously like any electronic device, they have the potential to stop working and leave a rider without any information.

If the old roadbooks failed they could still be manually ‘scrolled’, plus the CAP compass bearing and digital speedo were seperate. Though seperate on the navigation tower, it seems Sanders suffered a failure of all screens and had nothing to use. 

Like KTM’s problems weren’t enough at the moment, their rally leader had his race seriously compromised today: “You don’t know what to do,” said Daniel Sanders, “I couldn’t navigate and then the guys [he was having to follow] get lost, one goes one way, another goes another way and you don’t know what to do when you don’t have a CAP, no kilometres are working, you’re just lost. I picked the wrong person to follow.

“It’s unfortunate this has happened. Hopefully the organisers come up with a solution and fix this because everything was going good, navigation was going good, I did all the difficult stuff this morning and I felt good.”

Who’s to blame?

A mechanical problem with your machine, like Brabec had with his Honda exhaust yesterday, is one thing for a rider and team to deal with. But the mandatory equipment supplied by the organiser affecting results is another and we kinda want to say, told you so.

It’s worth noting we think they have a small camera looking at the nav tower so it is possible to check. (We’ve looked but cannot find the ruling on what they will follow for protocol in this case and will update this story).

There’s been lots of chin stroking about the digi books every since the race organisers proposed them and, well wouldn’t you know it, the naysayers were right.

Rally 2 class

This class looks almost calm by comparison after today’s shenanigans in the GP category! It remains as competitive but the classification is constant with Red Bull KTM’s rookie Edgar Canet holding a 5m43s lead now over Michael Docherty with Tobias Ebster third.

The lead Rally 2 trio sit 12-13-14th in the overall standings with Neels Theric, Jacob Argubright and Romain Dumontier also inside the top 20 scratch.

Overall classification (subject to change)

After 20 hours racing the leaderboard looks roughly the same as yesterday after race direction made a decision on Sanders’ roadbook problems and settling things on a 6:51 lead (half his lead from Stage 2) with Howes, Branch and Brabec all very close in the podium fight.

2025 Dakar Rally classification after stage 3 (by category):

Photo Credit: Sherco + Marcelo Maragni | Red Bull Content Pool