Riding without fanfare, avoiding blunders and staying in the ideal position to press forward without taking excessive risks, Brabec took over the reins of the rally following the previous special, the sixth of the rally. In the top 3 since day one, the Honda rider has truly come into his own, gaining an edge over his rivals in the dunes of the Empty Quarter. Of course, with another six gruelling stages ahead, his margin of under a minute over Ross Branch is far from guaranteeing him the triumph that he has been chasing for such a long time, not least because there are other riders who are still in the running too. Adrien Van Beveren made hay of the long 48-hour stage in the Saudi sands to narrow his deficit to the lead group. Now third overall at 9′21″, the Frenchman remains a force to be reckoned with going into the second week. So is Nacho Cornejo, the winner of stages 2 and 4, who is just 14 minutes down on his Californian teammate and leader. A bit further down, Toby Price and Kevin Benavides fly the flag for KTM, less than half an hour behind Brabec. The Australian is biding his time, waiting for an opening to launch his attack, while the Argentinian, still grappling with the sequelae of a leg fracture, is picking up steam.
On the flip side, multiple pretenders to the crown saw their hopes and dreams crushed in the opening week. Tosha Schareina, the Spanish rising star who signed for Honda, broke his wrist in the very first stage after bagging the prologue. Meanwhile, Skyler Howes lost plenty of time in the first few stages, eventually bowing out due to mechanical issues in the dunes of the Empty Quarter. Staying with Honda, Pablo Quintanilla was in the lead group when he ran out of fuel during the soul-crushing stage 6 and plummeted down the overall. Other early withdrawals include Sam Sunderland, who succumbed to a mechanical in stage 3; Sherco’s main hope, Lorenzo Santolino; and Joan Barreda, who was tackling his first Dakar with Hero. This leaves Ross Branch without a wingman for the second week of the rally after Joaquim Rodrigues and Sebastian Bühler crashed out of the race. Up against the mighty Honda brigade, the Botswanan will need a hefty dose of luck to overcome the many perils lurking on the road to Yanbu.
Meanwhile, in Rally 2, the incredible Jean-Loup Lepan stormed to the lead after stage 6. The Frenchman, rock-solid since the Dakar got under way, also claimed stages 2 and 6 and, to top it off, he is sitting tenth overall, an hour and a half behind Ricky Brabec. Now second in the standings, Romain Dumontier held the lead for quite a while, but a fuel hiccup in stage 6 cost him a loss of 50 minutes to Lepan. Nursing a broken rib, the winner of the 2023 Rally-Raid World Cup will have to grit his teeth all the way to Yanbu to snag a spot on the final podium. Harith Noah, Paolo Lucci and Bradley Cox are piling on the pressure within half an hour of the leader. Heinz Kidigadner’s young nephew Tobias Ebster is another man to watch. The Austrian is perched at the top of the Original by Motul leader board and clinched stage 5 in the Rally 2 class. He will be the talk of the town for a long time to come.
Finally, in the quad race, Manuel Andújar and Alexandre Giroud, the two winners of the three previous editions, are known for their diesel-type approaches. The Frenchman’s warm-up system took a bit longer than the Argentinian’s. While the Dakar specialists picked up steam, the Brazilian Marcelo Medeiros burst onto the scene, grooving to a samba beat and taking control in the opening two stages. Andújar finished on the podiums of these specials while waiting for stage 4 to bring down the hammer, clinching the stage win and the overall lead with the French two-time reigning champion in his slipstream. Andújar is 20 minutes ahead of Giroud and 45 minutes clear of Medeiros.
