In what is by far the closest finish of the 2025 Dakar Rally, the FIA stage win for Thursday came down to just one second. To be clear, it wasn’t entirely the result of a dramatic battle that went down to the wire between Seth Quintero and Nasser Al-Attiyah.

Both drivers had endured a frustrating Stage #4 with a myriad of punctures and other issues. With the rest day on Friday looming, both of them decided to go aggressive for Stage #5, a strategy that seemed to pay off massively.

Al-Attiyah chased down Mattias Ekström before taking the lead halfway. Quintero had to fight for longer after starting 27th, but found his stride in the final 60 kilometers to get past Ekström and overall leader Henk Lategan.

Although Al-Attiyah beat Quintero by 9:59, he received a ten-minute penalty after his spare tire fell out. Thus, Quintero was promoted to the win by a mere second.

“Yesterday we got three flats and lost over an hour, so today I thought let’s just go for it,” said Quintero. “All in all, it was a really rough marathon stage for us, but day two ended up a lot better than day one.”

A penalty also affected the FIM winner, albeit it was the removal of one instead. Adrien Van Beveren originally had two minutes added for speeding, which knocked him to fourth overall and shuffled the stage win to Luciano Benavides.

However, the FIM eventually restored Van Beveren’s victory after concluding he was beset by technical issues on his GPS (a recurring theme so far this race). Benavides’ KTM teammate Daniel Sanders also got eight minutes restored to re-extend his overall lead to 15 minutes on Tosha Schareina for the same reason.

Stage #5 marked the second and final leg of the marathon stage, though even the run back to the rest day was fraught with trouble. Guoyu Zhang was among those who got stuck, though he received a pull from YunXiang Racing colleague Rong Zi.

Martin Prokeš retired with an engine failure while Benediktas Vanagas hit a rock at KM 285 that smashed his windshield and damaged the front differential and transmission. Eduard Pons lost power steering in his Taurus T3 Max and crashed into a ditch, causing a rollover that cracked a bar on his roll cage. Fellow Taurus driver Corbin Leaverton was leading their class before his suspension broke.

The Dakar Classic wasn’t safe either, with the Renault 30 of Dakar Classic driver Patrice Auzet suffering a broken rear transmission.

Aliyyah Koloc averted disaster when a clutch failure struck her REVO T1+ halfway. Buggyra teammate Karel Poslední towed her for 200 kilometers. Poslední had problems on his Tatra the day before when all of the shock absorbers on his cockpit broke off.

“We towed her; of course we did,” Poslední remarked. “We couldn’t drive too fast anyway or we’d have been thrown around in the cab.”

Stage #5 winners

FIA

Class	Overall	Number	Driver	Team	Time
Ultimate	1	204	Seth Quintero	Overdrive Racing	4:32:53
Challenger	13	300	Yasir Seaidan	BBR Motorsport	4:51:27
SSV	23	404	Francisco López Contardo	Can-Am Factory Team	5:02:26
Stock	83	501	Ronald Basso*	Team Land Cruiser Toyota Auto Body	6:06:08
Truck	22	600	Martin Macík Jr.*	MM Technology	5:01:53

FIM

Class	Overall	Number	Rider	Team	Time
RallyGP	1	77	Luciano Benavides	Red Bull KTM Factory Racing	4:53:00
Rally2	8	73	Edgar Canet	Red Bull KTM Factory Racing	5:00:17

Other

Class	Number	Competitor	Team	Points
Dakar Classic	700	Carlos Santaolalla	Factory Tub	59
Mission 1000	1000, 1030	Benjamín Pascual, Yoshio Ikemachi	Segway Racing, HySE-X2	25

Leaders after Stage #5

FIA

Class	Overall	Number	Driver	Team	Time
Ultimate	1	211	Henk Lategan	Toyota Gazoo Racing South Africa	28:10:11
Challenger	15	301	Nicolás Cavigliasso	BBR Motorsport	30:38:42
SSV	21	425	Brock Heger*	Sébastien Loeb Racing	31:51:54
Stock	90	501	Ronald Basso*	Team Land Cruiser Toyota Auto Body	42:50:13
Truck	17	600	Martin Macík Jr.*	MM Technology	31:10:49

FIM

Class	Overall	Number	Rider	Team	Time
RallyGP	1	4	Daniel Sanders	Red Bull KTM Factory Racing	30:20:15
Rally2	10	73	Edgar Canet	Red Bull KTM Factory Racing	31:21:59

Other

Class	Number	Competitor	Team	Points
Dakar Classic	701	Lorenzo Traglio	Tecnosport	354
Mission 1000	1040	Jordi Juvanteny	KH-7 Ecovergy Team	115

Featured image credit: Marcelo Maragni / Red Bull Content Pool