2024 Dakar Rally results from day one of the “48hr Chrono” stage six spread across Thursday and Friday sees riders battered and blistered in the dunes – Adrien Van Beveren heads yet another Honda one-two, part way through and Ricky Brabec becomes new race leader.

2024 Dakar Rally Stage 6 (part A) in a nutshell – Shubaytah > Shubaytah , Special: 626km Liaison: 209km

• With 626 kilometres in total to travel across two days in the softest of Saudi’s sand dunes, stage six (part A) was a hard day on a bike by any measure. Sure, it looks fun in the videos below but to do it for 6:30hrs (at best, closer to 7hrs for most), it was clearly brutal on the body – six days into 12 in total don’t forget.
• Racing close to the Saudi border with Oman, the Empty Quarter is larger than France but is said to have less than 100 people resident in it…except this two days at least.
• Riders were aiming to get as far as they could through a looping special stage before 4pm when they were directed to the next nearest of seven bivouacs to prep their own bikes without assistance from crews, live without a phone signal (gasp!), and with a tent and sleeping bag for the night plus what the organisers called army rations to live off.   
• On the course it was another dramatic day for the leading contenders. There we were thinking KTM Group were the ones having a few mechanical issues this Dakar (ref: lost gear levers, no engine oil in bikes and broken engines). But the so far all-conquering Honda team have now had their first major mechanical of the rally with Skyler Howes going out just 39km in to the special, unable to fix the problem.
• More drama arrived for Honda’s stage five winner, Pablo Quintanilla too, who was so full gas in the dunes this morning he burned though all his CRF had onboard in under 200 kilometres.
• The soft sand was the cause and with no-one anywhere near the sharp end of the race willing to syphen over any gas, Pablo had to wait an hour and a half to scrounge some from a rider further down the rankings. That’s him out of the running, though unlike Howes he remains in the race.
• He wasn’t alone with Rally 2 class leader Romain Dumontier also running out, reportedly just 2km from a refuelling. Many of the top riders arrived at the first refuelling point on fumes which had the effect of slowing them down (a bit!) from then on, or at least making them notch it up a gear to keep the revs lower.
• How can they create a course in like this? The bikes should be able to make the mileage, and the organisers know what is possible. They are great at pushing the limits but equally, so are the riders and teams, they all know the distances and the terrain they face each day. Riders with the huge experience of Quintanilla know the dunes means more fuel is burned and making the distance has always been part of the game. It’s a tough call but this is Dakar.
• 400km in, Honda’s Van Beveren had taken over early leader on corrected time from teammate Ricky Brabec. By this point and through a lot of hard work in the morning, Ricky had put himself in the provisional lead overall, overtaking Ross Branch who was eight or so minutes adrift on the day.
• This is AVB in the stage, note how many lines he has to follow…

• Without those lines in the sand to follow, Joan Barreda had a hard time leading this morning and was caught by Nacho Cornejo with both collecting bonus time – Barreda over eight minutes.
• Toby Price and Daniel Sanders were also close on the ground and the time screens. Like yesterday the Australian pair were revelling in the sand and toughing out the conditions to bring it home third and fourth ahead of Luciano Benavides completing the stage top 5.
• Cornejo and Brabec landed first and were two of 12 riders passing 513km mark and rested together at point F. They join Van Beveren, Toby Price, Joan Barreda, Branch, Štefan Svitko, Daniel Sanders, Antonio Maio and Martin Michek will all camp together.
• Each group then starts again tomorrow morning when the clock restarts on the stage. The leading 12 having around 100km to cover, so a very short day just ahead of Saturday's rest day.

Todsay’s video highlights are here: 2024 Dakar Rally Stage 6A video highlights – “Brabec’s breakneck speed and dune durability”

The stage 6 route map and plan looks like this...lead riders are camped at point F (CPv4)

• One fact we completely overlooked yesterday (our bad) was that the Originals by Motuls (Malle Moto as was) class leader Tobias Ebster clocked in P10 overall. That’s a pretty damn good result for anyone in this class who prep their own bikes each day, sleep in tents and basically live the marathon stage every day of the race. The Austrian who finished 18th today, has over one hour lead in class. Hats off to you sir.

2024 Dakar Rally Stage 6A results (note: results are as it stands with part of the stage remaining. Riders are grouped into their finishing Way Point, kilometre marker and into different bivouacs):

*Results will update 

Provisional top 10 overall classification after stage 6 (part A):

1          R. BRABEC     25:40:50           

2          R. BRANCH     25:43:38          

3          J. CORNEJO     25:47:27          

4          A. VAN BEVEREN     25:53:52

5          T. PRICE     26:09:07

6          K. BENAVIDES     26:09:18

7          D. SANDERS     26:16:58         

8          L. BENAVIDES     26:27:13     

9          S. SVITKO     26:44:03 

10        J. BARREDA BORT     26:45:34

Photo Credit: ASO + Rally Zone + Marcin Kin