Dakar Rally Stage 6: De Mevius wins in Cars, Brabec wins on Bikes

Belgian Guillaume de Mevius (pictured) claimed stage six of the 2025 Dakar Rally behind the wheel of a Mini as the Dakar Rally resumed on Saturday after a rest day. Defending bike champion Ricky Brabec took the honors on two wheels.

Cars

Guy Botterill cracked under pressure from Belgian Guillaume de Mévius at km 531 and was unable to claw back the deficit by the finish.

The South African had to settle for second in Stage 6 of the 2025 Dakar Rally, handing his Belgian rival a second Ultimate class victory, adding to his triumph last year. It is a solid start for the Mini crew after a rally filled with challenges and hurdles.

Nasser Al Attiyah has clawed back just over 5 minutes from Henk Lategan in the overall standings. With a deficit now reduced to 30m25s, the Qatari driver inches closer to the symbolic half-hour mark. Yazeed Al Rajhi, who was at one point only 5 minutes behind Lategan during the special, finished the day 7m16s behind the leader. Mattias Ekström held on to third place at 22m37s, conceding only 2 minutes in the stage.

Bikes

Last year’s Dakar winner, American Ricky Brabec, timed his ride to perfection as he took victory on stage six today by 23 seconds over his Honda  teammate Adrien Van Beveren.  It was the second consecutive stage victory for Monster Energy Honda HRC in Saudi Arabia after Van Beveren’s first place on Friday making it 112 stage victories for Honda since Christian Desnoyers kicked off their winning ways back in 1979 on the original Paris-Dakar.

The rest day gave the Monster Energy Honda HRC riders a much needed boost as it prepared them for today’s super long stage on their Honda CRF450 RALLY bikes, where 605km of special stage was the task split up by an untimed 172km road section.  This interlude would offer competitors a brief break from the stoney canyons as they exited Ha’il before they faced challenging dunes on their way south to Al Duwadimi.

The early part of the stage saw plenty of chopping and changing at the top as the riders looked to take the advantage heading into the transfer section, but it was Ricky Brabec who powered his way through the final phase amongst the dunes to take his 11th Dakar Rally stage victory, his first of 2025.  Although he stopped to assist a stricken Ross Branch, it was a brilliant performance by the American as he kept his nerve to move closer to the overall podium as he now is just 23’18” off the lead of the rally in fourth.

Following a steward’s decision yesterday to re-instate some time to Adrien Van Beveren’s stage time from stage five the day before, the Frenchman was declared the winner of that stage during the rest day yesterday to further boost the morale of the squad as they went in to the second week of the rally today.

It worked too as Adrien had his best day so far on this 2025 Dakar Rally as he opened the entire stage and led it from stat to finish setting a blistering pace across his favored sandy tracks to rack up every single one of the 6m11s bonus time available. Although narrowly pipped to the top spot today by Brabec, he has chipped away at his time in the general standings and gained a further five minutes on the overall lead of the rally while remaining in third.

We’re not in first, so we’re not controlling the game, but we’re just trying to do our best to make up time to better our overall position. I think there’s other people out there playing games and right now, we’re just trying to manage ourselves and do the best we can. With regard to the day I’m happy with my riding and navigation. I’m also happy that Ross is OK, I saw where he crashed and pushed the rescue button.

“I saw the helicopter was just across the valley so I figured for me, it was better to ride across to it for a few kilometers and get the helicopter rather than try to phone them,” said Brabec.

“At the end of the day he’s good which is the main thing. We still have six days of racing with a lot of time to make up, so we’ll do our best and hopefully get some bonus time tomorrow.

Second overall heading into the rest day, Tosha Schareina was determined to pile on the pressure and kept his head down throughout the 605kms today to arrive at the finish line just 2m27s behind Brabec.  Although he continues to hold his second overall, the gap to the leader Sanders has now been cut to 11m46s so he’ll look to the spend the coming days pushing hard to reduce that time even further.

Overall Dakar Rally leader Daniel Sanders spent this stage preparing for the next one. Ninth on the day, he conceded some time to his closest overall rivals, Schareina, Brabec and Van Beveren.

His plan for tomorrow is simple: to capitalize on their tracks to catch up and claw back at least the time he lost today.

“I got off to a bit of a rough start, getting a little bit lost at the beginning and just trying to get back into the rhythm after the rest day.

“But, yeah, it was important not to go too good today because I think tomorrow’s a difficult stage, so I didn’t want to push and get up the front. So, hopefully we’re in a good starting position for tomorrow and, yeah, we’ll be back in the rhythm.”

2025 Dakar Rally Stage 6 Results – Car Top-10

2025 Dakar Rally Overall Standings after Stage 6 – Car Top-10

2025 Dakar Rally Stage 6 Results – Bikes Top-10

2025 Dakar Rally Overall Standings after Stage 6 – Bikes Top-10