Dakar 2025 – Stage 7: Victory for Lucas Moraes, the gaps narrow in the overall standings

Back to normal at the Dakar 2025. After a Mini’s victory yesterday, specifically that of Guillaume de Mevius and Mathieu Baumel, it’s a Toyota once again that recorded the best time of a stage on the Saudi tracks. In a loop around Al Duwadimi, it was Lucas Moraes and Armand Monleon who clocked the fastest time. Having suffered from suspension issues that cost them nearly three hours on Saturday, the Spanish-Brazilian duo won ahead of the Fords of Mattias Ekström and Mitchell Guthrie.

During this stage, the race direction admitted an error in the roadbook at kilometer 158. Consequently, it was decided to remove a section of about twenty kilometers from the course. As a result, the overall leader Henk Lategan lost just under twenty minutes to the day’s winner, and more importantly, seven minutes to Yazeed Al Rajhi. With five stages remaining, there is only a 21-second gap between the South African and the Saudi.

On his side, Nasser Al-Attiyah also gained time on the top two in the standings and is now 22 minutes from the lead. Mattias Ekström is only ten minutes behind Lategan and he might be the one to take advantage of a possible internal struggle between the two Toyotas of the leader and Al Rajhi.

It should be noted that, also at Toyota, Giniel de Villiers / Dirk Von Zitzewitz and Toby Price / Sam Sunderland were forced to withdraw for the same reasons. Each of the co-drivers from both teams had been injured in previous stages. For the first duo, it’s a noteworthy event since the 2009 edition winner had never abandoned the Dakar before. For the second duo, this withdrawal marks the end of a great run for the two multi-time motorcycle winners who had an interesting first week.

Stage 7 Classification

General ranking