Daniel Sanders eyes victory at Dakar Rally

A Victorian rider is eyeing a history-making win in what is widely considered the world’s toughest motorsport race.

Australian motorcycle racer Daniel Sanders is halfway to victory at the prestigious Dakar Rally, enjoying a run of dominance unseen for 28 years.

Sanders, 30, of the Yarra Valley, has established himself as favourite for the win among motorbike riders after going quickest in four of the Saudi Arabian rally’s six stages so far.

That run made his Dakar opening week the best performance for any rider in terms of stage wins since 1997.

He also increased his race lead by eight minutes on Friday’s rest day when his Red Bull KTM team’s appeal against time penalties for breaching race speed limits was upheld.

He posted a top-six time before the break, and now has a 15-minute buffer going into the final week.

Daniel Sanders.

It is a strong showing in an event seen by many as the world’s hardest rally, where unsighted crests and bumps scalped some of the best off-road racers in the first week.

Four-time Dakar winner Carlos Sainz and nine-time World Rally Champion Sébastien Loeb both went home early after smashing their cars in the Saudi sand in the first days.

Sanders, known as “Chucky”, was quickest in the event’s qualifying stage, and followed that with the best times on the first, second and fourth days of racing.

A GPS issue limited him to just 17th fastest on the third day - a glitch he described as “a nightmare”.

“I had no compass heading or kilometres or speed,” he said.

Sanders heads Spain’s Tosha Schareina and France’s Adrien van Beveren.

This year is the Victorian’s fifth Dakar attempt, with previous appearances bringing three stage wins, as well as fourth place overall and top rookie in 2021 - his best result to date.

Sanders flew from Victoria only days before the race and was relishing another attempt at what he called “the ultimate” challenge in motorsport.

His father Peter, an apple farmer from Three Bridges, joined him in the desert towards the end of the first week to cheer his son on.

Sanders says he’s on the ultimate challenge in motorsport.

A total of 580 competitors entered this year’s Dakar in categories including motorbikes, cars, trucks and classics.

The mid-way break marks the end of 3600km of intense racing, with more than 4100km yet to come.

Competitors will each cross more than 2300km over the next three stages – about the same distance as racing from Melbourne to Sydney each day.

They must find their own way to desert checkpoints, often through deep sand and over coarse volcanic rock, at speeds up to 160km/h for bikes and 180km/h for cars.

Sanders’ commanding lead is the largest for any rider since 2020, but the rugged and unpredictable nature of Dakar means there is no assurance of a result before the finish line.

Incidents have twice compromised his earlier Dakar campaigns: a fractured arm and wrist sustained in a high-speed crash ended his race prematurely in 2022, while in 2023 early contact with one of the car-sized thorn bushes that spotted the desert kept him in pain for the duration of the race.

Daniel Sanders.

He had suffered no such setbacks going into 2025’s break, save the GPS failure.

“Body’s good, bike’s good – that’s all that matters,” he said leading into the break.

Popular Australian Toby Price, who has won the Dakar Rally twice and switched from motorbikes to cars this year, hit problems in quick succession towards the end of week one.

Four flat tyres in about 30km on day five dropped him from the top-six in his category to outside the top-50.

He climbed back to 40th before the break.

“It’s been a tough first week, but we’ll keep at it,” he said.

19-year-old Toby Hederics, of Victoria, and 55-year-old Andrew Houlihan, of NSW, both motorbike riders, are 23rd and 96th respectively.

Competitors resumed racing on Saturday and will reach the finish line in the Rub’ al-Khali, one of the world’s driest regions, on January 17.

Originally published as Daniel Sanders eyes victory at Dakar Rally