I’m finding it hard to follow the Dakar closely with good info.
Blitz is excellent at covering heaps of other events - so hopefully we can get plenty of contributions in here.
Awesome Aussies Daniel Sanders and Toby Price both a chance for wins in their respective categories.
First link for the current standings in the bikes for Sanders, second link is the ultimate buggies for Price.
Four Aussies there. Chucky Sanders a real chance and a great start for Toby & Sam in the car. It’s a mind blowing challenge with fantastic coverage of the competitors and the locations.
48 hour Chrono will be a huge challenge - up next.
SBSOD has daily highlights and special features.
Dakar offical site has all the up to date details.
If you’ve never seen it before I can highly recommend. Stage one was 
Also if you want more commentary with some with knowledge and some less so then check out ADVrider.
There is an Aussie forum (the land of Toby Price) or the main racing forum, Dakar 2025 f5 firehose, but that is hard to keep up with at times.
Also as L&P has said the official site has plenty of detail and an app that pushes notifications on videos etc.
Not really enough in here interested to keep the convo going.
Go Chucky, Two Pies and the rest.
Chucky Sanders had another great rise and won the stage again - although no official times until the 48 hr chrono is over. 650km through desert dunes, rocky terrain and thistle bushes. They’re all legends.
Tobe had a great day moving to 9th overall in the cars.
Do we dare to dream??!!
Rookie Toby Hederics is also performing brilliantly finishing only 2 min behind Sanders.
Houlihan had a crash in stage one (I think) and is currently 61st in his class. Of course to finish the Dakar is a massive achievement in itself, so 
for them all.
It’s an insane amount of riding - muscling those bikes through the sand would be exhausting!
So after stage 2 which was spread over 2 days, Sanders has also won that stage and increased his lead to over 12mins. Bloody impressive going so far with the prologue and both stages so far all won by Sanders. Great start but still a long way to go.
In the car, Price was 9th for stage 2, but up into 4th overall, just under 12mins behind the leader.
In the past (in the bike category), Price has preferred not to lead early in the race - I believe mostly due to the difficulty in navigating and the likelihood of mistakes, so there’s a good chance he is exactly where he wants to be at the moment.
Keep it up fellas 
The other Aussie who is going really well is another Toby- Hederics in Rally2. His first Dakar- sitting 12th overall.
Chrono caused a lot of carnage, but our boys nailed it.
Camera coverage of the race is amazing.
Plus the Schey brothers in car 776 in the Classic category running about position 20 out of 80+ cars.
Chucky had more problems with the nav gear and got hit with an 8 minute penalty but that has now been reversed so he is currently just over 15 mins in front of Tosha.
Poor Tobe couldn’t take a trick in stage 4….an unbelievable 4 flat tyres!
Chucky going fantastically- I’m guessing the speeding penalties were reversed as his digital road book stopped working??
Hederics doing really well too- 10th overall.
Houlihan 4th Vets class. 46 overall in Rally2
Schey brothers sitting in 20th I think.
It’s been a gruelling first week with plenty of carnage. Be great to see all the Aussies finish……and Chucky take the cake!
Bummer Two Pies pulled out because Sammy got a concussion.
https://www.advrider.com/f/attachments/img_4836-jpeg.6585501/
Another bummer, Andrew Houlihan is out as well, actually not officially out but he will or should be. He partially detached his bicep muscle previously and now with another crash has fully detached it along with a couple of broken ribs and his collarbone.
Very sad news for both of the Aussies & really hope Sam recovers well - he’s had more than his fair share of injuries too. There are number of notables out in all classes. It appears to have been a particularly gruelling and challenging week- even more so than usual.
I’m getting pretty excited and anxious over Chucky’s chances of winning. As we’ve witnessed already everything can change in the blink of an eye. They’re all bloody legends really just for giving it a crack.
Hederics also remains top 10 - fantastic for the rookie.
Schey brothers are 23rd overall.
Edit: I just read Houlihan’s diary of his day. Truly unbelievable.
Another stage win for Chucky Sanders.
He has been amazing this year - can luck stay on his side to the end? So far to go and so many opportunities to lose time.
Luciano opens and wins the stage but Chucky increases his lead over Tosha and AVB. He is really riding a controlled race and while anything can happen (Tosha had a fair get off today) Chucky seems to be riding with a bit of restraint.
I don’t know whether you guys know much about Fabrizio Meoni who died in the Dakar 20 years ago. He was a KTM rider and had a lot to do with the development of the 950 which he rode and won at Dakar before the big bores were banned (I am lucky enough to have a 950 SE in the shed).
A bit of an explanation also on why the organisers have lowered the capacity to reduce the speeds of the race.
This is worth watching if you have some spare time:
Thanks for that - only yesterday I googled why all the bikes were 450’s as that seems a bit undersized for the job
450s aren’t undersized (especially these 450s) but riding a 950 in the Dakar would be nuts. The fastest average speed was set by Meoni in a 570km stage and he averaged 128 km/hr, so his top speed would have been crazy off road.
It would be really interesting to know what displacement the bikes would be now if there wasn’t the 450cc cap.
I was thinking something in the 500cc - 600cc range would be better suited to that terrain, but maybe they could still be nudging 1000cc?!
It is hard to know or at least I don’t know. Maybe they would be a bit bigger to get a bit more bottom end, but the larger the motor, generally the more fuel that they use and the heavier components have to be to handle the extra power and throwing around the extra weight in the dunes would not be extra fun.
Pretty confident that there wouldn’t be any 1000cc bikes getting about though.
