At just 118 kilometres in Selective Sections, the fifth stage of the 2024 Dakar Rally is a relative breeze as everyone’s focus is on Thursday’s much anticipated 48-hour Chrono Stage. Sébastien Loeb was thinking so far ahead that he was willing to take his foot off the gas and make a few mistakes during Wednesday’s action, sacrificing a good finish which would have meant starting further ahead.
Loeb was the first car to start the stage after winning on Tuesday, and was running seventh when he crossed the second and final checkpoint at KM 80. He eventually finished ninth, which while not an unimpressive outing was rather uncharacteristic especially as his Prodrive team-mate Nasser Al-Attiyah cruised to the stage win. The Frenchman then received a fifteen-minute penalty for not crossing a waypoint, dropping him further down the order to fortieth.
“We missed a waypoint intentionally,” Loeb admitted to L’Équipe. So why the forced unforced error?
Starting a stage is often seen as a disadvantage in rallies. Since races like the Dakar take place in wide open deserts without paved roads, those who start further back can simply rely on the path laid by rivals who went out first whereas the latter have to figure out the course on their own via what is given to them on the roadbook. To mitigate the damage, the FIM rewards the first starter with a time bonus that reduces the extra time they accumulated from having to navigate unlike the riders after them. The FIA has no such benefit.
While Loeb obviously has experience as the opener, he was not too excited about the prospect of opening the Chrono Stage, which takes place in the massive Empty Quarter and is the longest leg of the race at 584 kilometres.
“We didn’t take any risks. This allowed us to familiarise ourselves with driving in the dunes,” he explained. “100 kilometres was already long. The goal was to have a good position for tomorrow.
“We have opposing strategies with Nasser and Mathieu (Baumel, Al-Attiyah’s co-driver). They think they can open and it’s not a problem for them. I didn’t feel like opening in the dunes for 500 kilometres. I prefer to play it safe and start further back then try to move up through the pack. We know it’s going to be long and hard for the cars, and I approach it humbly.”
While he already won with the marque last November in Dubai, Al-Attiyah’s stage win is his first at Dakar with Prodrive after joining the team for 2024. He had struggled with tyre punctures and other difficulties to start the rally, which kept him off the podium until he placed runner-up to Loeb in Stage #4. With his victory on Wednesday and Carlos Sainz finishing sixteenth, he moves up to second overall and nine minutes back of Yazeed Al-Rajhi.
“For me there is no strategy, just I was pushing,” Al-Attiyah stated. “I needed to win the stage. Doesn’t matter what happened, because it’s a long (stage) tomorrow. It’s 600 kilometres. I don’t care if I open the road, if I lose time, but I need to manage to finish all the 600 kilometres. It’s very important.”
Much like the Prologue, Stage #5’s length—the shortest of all twelve legs—provided a handful of first-time winners. Most notably, Tobias Ebster won in Rally2 despite racing solo as a Malle Moto (Original by Motul) rider, edging out Rally2 general leader Romain Dumontier by just thirty-two seconds.
Pablo Quintanilla scored his seventh career Dakar stage win in RallyGP and first since 2022, while his Monster Energy Honda team-mate José Ignacio Cornejo finished tenth and lost the overall lead back to Ross Branch. Mason Klein enjoyed a fifth-place run to rebound after mechanical issues plagued him the past two days. Luciano Benavides suffered a rash of technical problems including an engine failure, ruining what would have been a solid outing.
Jérôme de Sadeleer assumed the top spot in SSV after finishing third behind Xavier de Soultrait and Yasir Seaidan. De Soultrait, who races for Loeb’s team, notched his second stage win after the Prologue.
Even as the shortest leg and more a final tune-up for the Chrono Stage, the day still turned into a nightmare for those like Gerard Farrés and Lucas Moraes. Farrés, who entered Wednesday as the SSV leader, rolled at KM 84 and consequently dropped fourteen places in the overall. Moraes, the Stage #3 victor in Ultimate, flipped and was stuck on his side until the Prodrive of Marcos Baumgart lent him a hand. Quad rider Toni Vingut retired from the race after crashing on a dune, briefly knocking him unconscious and breaking his ulna, radius, and sacrum bones as well as six ribs.
“In addition to the physical damage, it is tough to see how an entire year of work can disappear in a few seconds, but all racers are aware of it,” Vingut commented. “The Dakar is the toughest rally in the world, and we know its difficulty and dangers.”
Stage #5 winners
| Class | Number | Competitor | Team | Time |
| Ultimate (T1) | 200 | Nasser Al-Attiyah | Nasser Racing | 1:37:25 |
| Stock (T2) | 501 | Akira Miura* | Team Land Cruiser Toyota Auto Body | 2:19:51 |
| Challenger (T3) | 301 | Francisco Lopéz Contardo | Red Bull Can-Am Factory Racing | 1:40:47 |
| SSV (T4) | 411 | Xavier de Soultrait* | Sébastien Loeb Racing | 1:44:56 |
| Truck (T5) | 601 | Martin Macík Jr.* | MM Technology | 1:52:25 |
| RallyGP | 7 | Pablo Quintanilla | Monster Energy Honda Rally Team | 1:32:53 |
| Rally2 | 96 | Tobias Ebster* | Kini Rally Racing Team | 1:37:26 |
| Malle Moto | 96 | Tobias Ebster* | Kini Rally Racing Team | 1:37:26 |
| Quad | 177 | Marcelo Medeiros | Taguatur Racing Team | 1:51:09 |
Leaders after Stage #5
| Class | Number | Competitor | Team | Time |
| Ultimate (T1) | 201 | Yazeed Al-Rajhi | Overdrive Racing | 17:24:04 |
| Stock (T2) | 500 | Akira Miura* | Team Land Cruiser Toyota Auto Body | 25:08:11 |
| Challenger (T3) | 302 | Eryk Goczał | EnergyLandia Rally Team | 19:01:18 |
| SSV (T4) | 42 | Jérôme de Sadeleer* | MMP Compétition | 21:13:42 |
| Truck (T5) | 600 | Janus van Kasteren* | Boss Machinery Team de Rooy | 20:01:22 |
| RallyGP | 46 | Ross Branch | Hero MotoSports | 19:05:03 |
| Rally2 | 16 | Romain Dumontier | Team Dumontier Racing | 19:43:55 |
| Malle Moto | 96 | Tobias Ebster* | Kini Rally Racing Team | 21:28:38 |
| Quad | 174 | Manuel Andújar | 7240 Team | 23:45:23 |
