The battle for third place in the 2025 Dakar Rally intensified on stage eight as Dacia’s Nasser Al-Attiyah reduced the gap to the M-Sport Ford of Mattias Ekström to just over four minutes.
Al-Attiyah, who started two places further back on the road for the 487km stage from Al Duwadimi to the Saudi capital of Riyadh, with a deficit to Ekström of over 11 minutes, but used the superior road position to carve chunks of the Swede.
The pair have been squabbling over the final podium position ever since stage four, when Al-Attiyah and navigator Edouard Boulanger were halted for over half an hour with a broken rear suspension arm. The gap has since ebbed and flowed, with starting position in the stages adding to the yo-yo effect of the standings.
The route to Riyadh was another split stage away from the bikes, meaning those opening the road lost a lot of time early on. Proof of that was Ekström, from second on the road, only managing the 53rd quickest time and dropping over four minutes by the first waypoint at 54km. Teammate Mitch Guthrie Jr and Kellon Walch fared little better from third, languishing among the Challenger and SSV ranks in 64th.
Al-Attiyah won the Dacia's debut event in Morocco late last year but hasn't been in a position to battle for victory in Dakar so far
Like during the controversial stage seven, navigation was a particular challenge at the start of day nine as the crews had to negotiate rocky sections mixed with added vegetation before a section of dunes.
Tasked with opening the road for large parts on the rollercoaster stage, Ekström managed to cling on to his advantage of Al-Attiyah but knows the remaining four stages will demand a similar approach.
“When you are in the dust, it’s so difficult to judge which is the correct track or not,” said Ekström.
“In the beginning the navigation was difficult but then later in the dunes, it was pretty fun but we opened between 50km and 350km so that was tough. I am doing everything I can, and I will need to do the same for the next four days.
Ekström and navigator Emil Bergkvist made a couple of U-turns amid a complicated piece of navigation but overall, the Swedish pairing were satisfied with their performance.
After some early-stage navigational struggles, Ekström got pointing the right away again and led the field through the dunes
“I think we had some good pace considering there were no bikes in front of us. In the end, we were able to race with Nasser, Yazeed [Al Rajhi] and Lucas [Moraes] and the Centurys in the dunes because there was not much else to do, but it was a good stage.”
Although Al-Attiyah took time out of his Ford rival, the five-time Dakar Rally winner admitted he struggled with navigation initially before hitting his stride in the dunes.
“It was a very tough day,” Al-Attiyah explained.
“Sometimes when we were opening it was very difficult. Yazeed had a good line and when he passed, we just followed him, until the dunes when we passed him, but it was really difficult.
“I am happy to finish this day. We still have four days left and we’ll see. The navigation was very hard. Sometimes we were lucky, other times not, but we made it here”.
At the front, Henk Lategan bounced back from a considerable time loss in stage seven by setting the fastest time, to extend his margin over Al Rajhi in the overall standings to 5m41s.
His Toyota Gazoo Racing teammate Guy Botterill produced another impressive performance to finish second on the stage, but stealing the limelight was the pair of Century Racing CR7s of Mathieu Serradori and Brian Baragwanath.
Serradori, who is believed to be the only driver not to have sustained a puncture during the opening week, placed third alongside navigator Loïc Minaudier, to consolidate sixth overall, one place behind M-Sport Ford’s Mitch Guthrie.
Baragwanath was fourth on the stage, giving Century Racing Team its best result of the Dakar so far.
