2025 Dakar Rally stage seven results, another day where Red Bull KTM’s lone soldier Daniel Sanders fired back at the Honda army’s siege in the sand – roadbook problems help Edgar Canet cane it for second overall.

2024 Dakar Rally Stage 7 in a nutshell – Duwadimi > Duwadimi Special: 411km Liaison: 297km

• A slightly amended stage seven start time (helicopters, logistics, safety…) saw Ricky Brabec start the special at 8am this morning. A late start you might think except it was a long ride out and riders were still up and away early (just after 5am out the bivouac and dressed like motocross mums again in the cold).
• Top 10 riders start in three minute intervals, reducing to two minutes from 10th to 20th and then one minute up to 40th and finally every 30 seconds thereafter. Worth knowing because three minutes is a lot at the rate these guys ride, long enough to get out of sight. When a rider maintains any of that advantage for a stage (or large part of it), like Adrien Van Beveren did yesterday, it is impressive.
• Equally (and more commonly) when the riders catch each other early it knocks the stuffing out the rider caught. Ricky Brabec felt that sinking feeling just 30km or so into the special where a navigation error saw all his start advantage gobbled up by his teammate, Adrien Van Beveren. It was a mistake which cost him dearly today and in the overall.
• Honda is the team again this Dakar with all riders still in the race (rare enough) and four inside the top five, Pablo Quintanilla is the odd-one out in P7. They’re riding great as a team, helping each other, but it’s easy to see their strategy isn’t working on a day like today in the fight against the lone soldier Sanders.
• Second in the classification and fourth off the start, Tosha Schareina gained time on his HRC buddies out front and, along with Hero MotoSports’ Jose Cornejo starting third, formed a quartet for more than half of the stage.
• Starting from ninth meanwhile, race leader Daniel Sanders had an 11-minute advantage in general classification, was on his own and doing his own thing again i.e. riding fast. The KTM rider doesn’t really need to win stages and can afford to maintain an advantage and bring it home.
• Adding “a couple of clickers” on this suspension for the sand today aided his already high confidence and Chucky rolled with the dunes today for a fifth stage win (including prologue) – the last rider to win five in one Dakar was Toby Price in 2016.
• After today, Sanders has a 15-plus minute lead in front of Schareina and 26 ahead of AVB in third. Brabec needs to watch out in fourth as Sander’s KTM teammate Luciano is closing.
• The stage 12 finish is a long, long way off still (over 2500km) but the days are running out her for any of the Honda riders. At this pattern, mistakes or mechanical problems are Sanders’ rivals only hopes.
• Digital roadbook woes continue, this time for many competitors across all classes experiencing errors, it seems. Rally 2 class leader Edgar Canet (again) had problems. He arrived at the first refuelling point, 89km into the special, with his tablet not working since kilometre one he said. The organisers, who kept remarkably tight-lipped about this problem during the live stage, decided he needed a new one but took more than an hour and half. The rookie got going again with a new roadbook but by then was in the thick of the bike category amateur riders.
• Out front in the R2 class and oblivious to all this, Tobias Ebster was again riding well today to lead the category home ahead of Romain Dumontier and Neels Theric who all troubled the top 10 scratch.
• But eyes were on the late-comer to the party, Canet, who caught the headlines with a second overall on the stage for a KTM 1-2. He leas Rally 2 by over 20 minutes now. Sand and loads of lines to follow, it must have felt like a motocross track to Edgar... 
• Bike problems affected Mason Klein who continues his swing-o-meter Dakar. A chart-topping ride yesterday juxtaposed with another mechanical issue today with the Kove rider stopped with a broken engine. He tried to fix the problem but had to throw in the towel for another year.
• There’s no let-up for those who remain. Over 700km tomorrow with 483km of the eighth special stage which crosses to the Saudi capital, Riyadh.

2025 Dakar Rally stage 7 results (provisional, will update):

2025 Dakar Rally classification after stage 7 (by class):

Rally 2

*Results will update in full once official

Photo Credit: Marecelo Maragni | Red Bull + DPPI + Honda Racing