Australia's Dakar Rally motorbike champ Daniel Sanders has been left relieved not to have dropped more time to his sensational young teammate Edgar Canet after feeling rough on stage one of his title defence in Saudi Arabia.
World rally raid champ Sanders, who had lost the prologue by just three seconds to his Red Bull KTM rookie colleague Canet on Saturday, again finished runner-up to the 20-year-old Spaniard over the 305km first stage around Yanbu on the Red Sea coast on Sunday.
Both had been outpaced by 2024 world champ Ross Branch, but they leapfrogged the Hero rider for stage honours after the Botswanan was slapped with a six-minute penalty for breaking speed limits.
It meant Canet, who'd become the youngest motorbike stage winner in Dakar annals on Saturday, picked up his second-straight win over Sanders by 62 seconds, increasing his overall lead to 65 seconds.
That gap represents next-to-nothing in such an exhausting, unpredictable two-week 7900km slog but it was evidence again of the talent of the gifted Canet, as he beat both the defending champ Sanders and the 2024 Dakar winner Ricky Brabec, who was third on his Monster Energy Honda and is now 97sec adrift.
The 31-year-old Sanders admitted he'd suffered a bad day.
"The stage was quite basic, I was expecting something more difficult. It's hard to make a difference in these conditions," shrugged 'Chucky'.
"I slipped up a few times with tricky notes and lost some time, but I'm happy not to lose more because I wasn't feeling great today. It was windy and rocky, and the terrain was hard to read. My helmet was getting buffeted by the wind, so I had a hard time focusing on the road book.
"It was the same terrain on which I won stage one in 2023. I remembered it as basic navigation on easy terrain, so I knew the margins would be slim. I'm looking forward to tomorrow and a stage that's more than just twisting the throttle all the way back, like today.
"I didn't go into the red today, I hope we can push harder tomorrow."
Canet continued his dream Dakar debut, becoming the first Spanish rider for 11 years since Marc Coma to lead the rally for two consecutive days.
Meanwhile, home driver and defending cars' champion Yazeed Al-Rajhi struggled, clocking up 16 minutes of penalties as Belgium's X-Raid Mini driver Guillaume de Mevius took the lead.
Al-Rajhi was penalised for missing a waypoint and speeding and ended up nearly 29 minutes off the lead.
Qatar's five-time winner Nasser Al-Attiyah was second for the Dacia Sandriders team, 40 seconds behind de Mevius, while Australia's former two-time bike winner Toby Price is 16th overall for the Toyota Gazoo Racing team, 5min 17sec behind.
