The 45th edition of the Dakar got under way on the Red Sea coast near Yanbu, which hosted a 13 km prologue on a winding sandy track packed for the occasion. Former enduro rider Toby Price had good reason to salivate at the course, which started and ended at the entrance to the Sea Camp.
Price bounced back after two painful exits from rallies, one due to a car fire in the Baja 1000 and another due to a crash in the Rallye du Maroc.
The Australian, who was not tipped as KTM's safest bet, scored his sixteenth Dakar stage win by a single second over his compatriot Daniel Sanders, while Botswana's Ross Branch took the bottom step of the podium behind the two men from Oz.
Joaquim Rodrigues (sixth) and Sebastian Bühler (eighth) also placed high and proved that Hero is a force to be reckoned with.
Someone must have put a jinx on Nacho Cornejo. The Chilean received a devastating blow in 2021, when he crashed out of the lead with two days to go. Today, the man on an HRC got his seventh Dakar off to an inauspicious start with a crash on the first turn of the prologue.
No broken bones, no serious injuries, but the time loss will leave him as salty as the breeze on the shores of the Red Sea. He finished 79th on the day and his actual deficit of 1′15″ to Toby Price was turned into a difference of 6′15″ by the coefficient of 5 applied to the prologue to dissuade competitors from sandbagging. Nacho, the second-last ranked biker in the Rally GP category, ahead of the equally unfortunate Balooshi (97th overall), is likely to start in second place tomorrow.
Entrants in the Rally GP category will open the first stage in reverse order of their times today. To make matters worse, the new rules entitle the top 10 riders in the prologue to pick their starting positions from among the 28 available slots in the Rally GP category. The fastest bikers in the prologue are likely to cluster at the back of the field to benefit from the tracks left by the early starters.
Australian bikers have dominated the inaugural stage of the Dakar ever since Joan Barreda won the opener of the 2019 edition. Toby Price has scored a hat-trick since 2020. The only one that escaped him, stage 1A of the 2022 Dakar, went to fellow Australian Daniel Sanders, who netted GasGas its maiden win. Price has never gone home empty-handed in nine Dakar starts. Will the 2023 edition of the toughest rally raid on Earth see him return to the top of the podium for the first time since 2019?
ASO