Rallying - Dakar Rally - Prologue - Bisha, Saudi Arabia - January 3, 2025 IMT Evo Toyota Gazoo Racing's Henk Lategan and Brett Cummings in action during the prologue REUTERS/Maxim Shemetov
(Reuters) - Toyota's Henk Lategan won the Dakar Rally car prologue in Saudi Arabia on Friday, ahead of Ford M-Sport's Mattias Ekstroem and five-times champion Nasser Al-Attiyah with the Dacia Sandriders team.
The times from the 29km prologue around the south-western city of Bisha determine the starting order for Saturday's first 413km stage but do not count towards the overall classification.
South African Lategan, who missed last year's Dakar due to a shoulder injury and last won a stage in 2022, beat Sweden's Ekstroem by one second with Qatari Al-Attiyah a further 19 seconds back.
"It wasn’t a perfect drive, we made a few mistakes here and there, but it was a good stage. We had a good rhythm quite early on," said Lategan.
"Usually, I struggle to get going on the short stages. I need about 20km to warm up, but we knew this was quite important for the road position on the first stage, so we pushed a little bit."
Defending champion and four-times winner Carlos Sainz finished 25th in his Ford M-Sport Raptor.
Indian motorcycle rider Harith Noah, in his sixth Dakar after finishing 11th overall last year and winning the Rally 2 class, withdrew after suffering a wrist fracture that required surgery.
Australian Daniel Sanders led the bike standings for Red Bull KTM, finishing 12 seconds clear of Hero's Ross Branch and 19-year-old Spaniard Edgar Canet, also on a Red Bull KTM.
Honda's defending champion Ricky Brabec of the United States was 18 seconds off the pace in fourth.
Spaniard Sandra Gomez, the only female rider in this year's edition, was 65th of 134.
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin in London, editing by Pritha Sarkar)
