Toyota Gazoo Racing’s Henk Lategan laid down the first marker of the 2025 Dakar Rally by setting the pace on a tricky prologue stage around Bisha.
The triple South African Rally Raid champion finished just one second clear of M-Sport Ford’s Mattias Ekström, with five-time Dakar winner Nasser Al-Attiyah the best of the Dacia Sandriders in third after opening the road.
Completing the top five was three-time W2RC champion in the SSV and Challenger class, Rokas Baciuška, in his Overdrive Racing Toyota, and X-raid Mini JCW’s João Ferreira who ended up under half a minute short of Lategan’s best time.
It was also a hugely encouraging start to the Dakar for car debutants Toby Price and Sam Sunderland; the double bike winners ended up just 44-seconds adrift of Lategan in their Overdrive Racing Hilux.
With the 48-Hour Chrono stage on the horizon on Sunday, strategy will play an important role over the next couple of days and has already been deployed in the road order setting prologue.
The top 10 crews from the prologue will get to choose their start position for tomorrow’s opening stage of the rally, a loop around Bisha. Those starting further down the order, outside of the top 10, should benefit from more favorable conditions.
Al-Attiyah, who will almost certainly start eighth on the road tomorrow, knows that road order will be a major strategic ploy heading into the Chrono stage.
“I am really happy to open the road and finish in the top three,” Al-Attiyah said. “[Navigator] Edouard [Boulanger] did a really good job, today was really tricky and not easy but I am happy to start the rally strong and confident.
“Tomorrow will be a proper stage, more than 400km, we have a good strategy for the next few days, in the 48 hours and I hope that we can do it in a good way.”
Part of the reason the crews have one eye on Sunday more so than stage one on Saturday is that the 48-hour Chrono is exactly that. A marathon stage spanning two days and where Yazeed Al Rajhi fell foul last year, extinguishing his victory chances in the process. Crews will need to try and get as far as they can before 4.30pm local time and head to one of six remote bivouacs with zero mechanical assistance before completing the stage from 7am the following morning.
A strong finishing position at the end of Stage “2a” if you will, is therefore crucial to minimize potential time loss on Monday.
Al-Attiyah’s Dacia team-mate Sébastien Loeb, who finished seventh in the prologue, was happy to make it into the top 10, despite what he called a “tricky” opening test.
“[Seventh] place is not bad, we wanted to be in the top 10 in order to be able to choose our position for stage one tomorrow,” Loeb said. “We had a clean stage, no mistakes; we saw that some guys were pushing quite hard already but it’s all good so far.”
Among those outside the top 10, and therefore guaranteed to start behind the quickest prologue crews is Ford’s Carlos Sainz.
The defending Dakar winner was just over a minute down on Lategan and will be one of the last Ultimate class runners to take to the stage on Saturday.
This may give Sainz the best chance to set a top time when the crews return to Bisha tomorrow evening, but on the flip side, those who pace well in stage one will face the challenge of opening the road for the first half of the 48H Chrono stage and risk losing chunks of time.
Joining Sainz outside the top 10 is M-Sport Ford team-mate Mitch Guthrie, Toyota’s Seth Quintero, Cristina Gutiérrez Herrero (Dacia) and Overdrive Racing’s Al Rajhi.
In contrast, X-raid Mini JCW’s Guillaume de Mévius may well be the first Ultimate frontrunner on the stage tomorrow, albeit due to misfortune rather than tactics on the prologue. The Belgian, who is navigated by Mathieu Baumel, punctured on the 29km test and lost four minutes.
In accordance to the W2RC regulations, crews who set a time more than 115% slower than the fastest prologue scratch will be grouped together, with the order reversed for stage one. Therefore, de Mévius and Baumel could be disadvantaged.
In a post on social media, Baumel confirmed that the pair suffered a slow puncture.
“The Dakar has not started as we would have liked,” Baumel explained. “We got a slow puncture after we saw that the pressure was dropping, and we were forced to change the tyre at 12km. Obviously, in a 29km stage, this made it quite complicated.
“It’s not so bad as the prologue positions don’t count for the overall classification; the only thing is that with the new regulations, there is a strong possibility that we will have to open the road tomorrow, so it’s up to us to do a good job.”
What the leaders said
Returning to the Dakar following a second shoulder surgery in three years, Lategan pushed from the outset and delivered a strong performance to go fastest.
The South African, co-driven by Brett Cummings, threaded the needle perfectly despite a few hairy moments.
“We had a good rhythm early on, usually I struggle in the short stages, and I need around 20km to warm up, but we knew this was quite important for the road order for the first stage, so we pushed quite a bit,” reflected Lategan.
“The pace is so high and there are a lot of narrow spots where, if you get it right, it can go really well but if you get it wrong, it can go really wrong, and you can take a wheel off.
“It’s a fine balance; you can either be fast or you can be nowhere.”
Second fastest on stage, Ekström was left ruing a slight mistake which the Swede said probably cost him around five seconds.
“It felt good all the way,” said Ekström. “The car was good and the setup was nice but there was just one place where it was like rock crawling, second gear and I felt the road was going to the left, but it was actually a hairpin right.
“And when I realized this, I knew that I lost maybe five seconds and that it would be difficult to have a perfect run. It was like racing between trees; one time I took a [bit of the] hood off, then I took a mirror and then one time I took a bush straight-on, so that was my responsibility!”
Prologue result (Bisha-Bisha)
1 Henk Lategan/Brett Cummings (Toyota Gazoo Racing) 15m28s
2 Mattias Ekström/Emil Bergkvist (M-Sport Ford) +1s
3 Nasser Al-Attiyah/Edouard Boulanger (Dacia Sandriders) +20s
4 Rokas Baciuška/Oriol Mena (Overdrive Racing) +21s
5 João Ferreira/Filipe Palmeiro (X-raid Mini JCW) +26s
6 Brian Baragwanath/Leonard Cremer (Century Racing) +30s
7 Sébastien Loeb/Fabian Lurquin (Dacia Sandriders) +33s
8 Lucas Moraes/Armand Monleon (Toyota Gazoo Racing) +35s
9 Nani Roma/Alex Haro Bravo (M-Sport Ford) +35s
10 Saood Variawa/François Cazalet (Toyota Gazoo Racing) +41s
