South Africans Henk Lategan and Brett Cummings have clinched another stage victory on the eighth special of the 2025 Dakar Rally. The Toyota Gazoo Racing pair finished ahead of their teammates and compatriots Guy Botterill and Dennis Murphy at the bivouac in Riyadh on Monday and have extended their overall lead.
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Botteril and Murphy put up a considerable challenge to the leaders when they started posting faster times at the checkpoints around the middle of the day’s special. Despite starting the stage 29th, they finished just 1 minute 47 seconds behind Lategan and Cummings.
“It went well. Unfortunately, on the last hundred kilometres we had a tyre that was going flat, so we had to take it a bit easy and then just before we got to the dunes we had to put air in the tyre. So, we lost about a minute there, maybe a minute and a half. I think a win was on the cards today, it’s just unfortunate. We were trying really hard to get a win but second is good. The car felt really good and we’re looking forward to the last few days of the Dakar. South Africa is doing really well. We’ve built most of the cars and I’m not sure where Henk finished but we’re in the top three for the Dakar overall”.
The Century Racing Factory Team also performed well on stage eight, which consisted of 487 km of special stage and 737 km in total. Frenchman Mathieu Serradori and South African Brian Baragwanath were third and fourth fastest on the day. Two-time Dakar winner Joan “Nani” Roma was the fastest of the M-Sport Fords today, finishing fifth.
Although M-Sport Ford’s Mattias Ekström (third overall in the rankings) passed yesterday’s stage winner Lucas Moraes early on, the Swede soon found himself doing battle with Overdrive’s Yazeed Al Rajhi (second overall) and Dacia’s Nasser Al-Attiyah – with the Saudi local Al Rajhi emerging the fastest of the trio.
On Tuesday 14 January, the field will race from the capital Riyadh, to Haradh. The short 357 km special will consist of mostly fast dirt tracks – an advantage to those who can consistently be fast.
Overall rankings
- Henk Lategan (Toyota Gazoo Racing)
- Yazeed Al Rajhi (Overdrive Racing)
- Mattias Ekstrom (Ford M-Sport)
- Nasser Al-Attiyah (The Dacia Sandriders)
- Mitch Guthrie (Ford M-Sport)
- Mathieu Serradori (Century Racing Factory Team)
- Juan Cruz Yacopini (Overdrive Racing)
- Seth Quintero (Toyota Gazoo Racing)
- Joao Ferreira (X-Raid Mini JCW Team)
- Brian Baragwanath (Century Racing Factory Team)
