Dakar 2025 – Stage 1: Seth Quintero wins ahead of Guerlain Chicherit

It was to be expected, with the 48-hour deadline planned so early in the rally, the first stage would turn into a game of hide-and-seek among the favorites.

Like Sébastien Loeb and Fabian Lurquin, who voluntarily stopped their Dacia Sandrider to lose time and avoid having to open the track tomorrow, his teammate Nasser Al-Attiyah, as well as Lucas Moraes with his Toyota, did the same.

Winning move? We’ll have to wait for the next two days of the rally to find out. In any case, the 413 kilometers of special stage planned today allowed those who preferred to aim for the stage victory to shine. Starting with Seth Quintero. The one whom many see as the new prodigy of rally-raid claimed the stage driving his Toyota Hilux.

The American driver is ahead of Guerlain Chicherit co-piloted by Alex Winocq in their Mini from the X-Raid team. The first Dacia is driven by Cristina Gutierrez who ranks fifth, two positions ahead of the titleholder Carlos Sainz and his Ford Raptor. The two Spanish drivers might have made the best moves since they’ll let several competitors open the track ahead of them, benefiting from it to gain about ten minutes ahead of Loeb and Al-Attiyah in the overall ranking.

Now it’s time for the daunting 48-hour stage with nearly a thousand timed kilometers on the agenda, still around the city of Bisha. Spread over two days, this innovation introduced last year will allow competitors to recapture the spirit of the early Dakar rallies with a night under the stars in the middle of the desert.

Stage 1 Ranking

General classification