RALLYING: High five for Toyota but Al-Attiyah leads after Dakar second stage

Toyota drivers dominated the second stage of the Dakar Rally on Monday, securing the fastest five positions. However, Nasser Al-Attiyah claimed the top spot in the car standings for the Dacia Sandriders team.

The Qatari, a five-time Dakar winner, finished eighth fastest on the 400km special stage from Yanbu on Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast to Al-Ula. Despite this, he ended the day seven seconds ahead of Toyota’s Seth Quintero.

American Quintero won the stage, finishing one minute and 42 seconds ahead of last year’s overall runner-up, South Africa’s Henk Lategan.

Saudi Arabia’s 2025 champion Yazeed Al-Rajhi placed third for Toyota’s Overdrive customer team after losing nearly half an hour on Sunday. Australian Toby Price, a two-time winner on motorcycles, finished fourth in another Toyota Hilux T1+, with Portuguese teammate Joao Ferreira in fifth.

“It was a good day. I am really quite happy to not go crazy from the beginning, without any punctures,” said Al-Attiyah. “This is what we need to do for the next two or three days, and then we can find our rhythm.”

Belgian Guillaume de Mevius, who won the opening stage and gave co-driver Mathieu Baumel a morale boost a year after having a leg amputated, was third overall. He was followed by Lategan and France’s nine-time world rally champion Sébastien Loeb in a Dacia. The top seven were separated by less than three minutes.

So far, three different manufacturers have claimed stage victories: Ford won the prologue on Saturday, Mini X-Raid on Sunday, and Toyota on Monday.

In the motorcycle category, Australia’s defending champion Daniel Sanders won the stage and took the lead from Spanish KTM teammate Edgar Canet. Canet, who was first on the road, suffered a minor fall after 100km, allowing Sanders to overtake and take a 30-second lead.

American 2024 winner Ricky Brabec remained third on his factory Honda, two minutes and 18 seconds behind the leader. British rider James Hillier, an Isle of Man TT winner, retired after fracturing his elbow following a fall 250km into Sunday’s opening stage. Indian rider Harith Noah, a Rally 2 class winner in 2024, also failed to start Monday’s stage after injuring his back on Sunday.

Tuesday’s third stage covers 422km of desert terrain, starting and finishing in Al-Ula.

The endurance rally spans two weeks and 7,994km, including 4,840km across 13 timed stages, all within Saudi Arabia. The Dakar Rally began in 1978, originally running from Paris to Dakar in Senegal. It moved to South America in 2009 for security reasons and then to Saudi Arabia in 2020. The event also serves as the opening round of the World Rally-Raid Championship (W2RC).

-Reporting by Alan Baldwin in London; Editing by Pritha Sarkar/Reuters