Enduro21’s daily Dakar notebook from the 2023 race bivouac in Saudi Arabia hears from riders confused by trees, surprising by rivers and looks at how one small mistake can have big consequences.

Five days in charge of the standings for Skyler Howes, and almost as many in second and two more inside top six for Toby Price shows why these two riders sit first and second, separated by just three seconds overall tonight.

Kevin Benavides is third, five minutes back but the next best is Adrien Van Beveren 15 minutes adrift. That’s a lot which can easily come and go (just check the first three riders away today and see how much time they lost) but so far Howes and Price have steered clear of such mistakes, limited time losses on their early days and posted fastest times on their late ones.

Week two is a fresh start, plenty of people will tell you round here. We’ll see tomorrow when the leading two start third and second respectively on the stage but basically they’ve managed each day better so far.

My roadbook fell out my pocket sir, honest

One previous race leader sits in sixth place tonight, nearly 20 minutes back after a bit of a nightmare. Mason Klein seemed confused at the stage finish, he’d taken a knock or two during a damaging day.

How easy was it to quite badly affect your race by simply losing something out your pocket? Just ask Mason who had a small(ish) crash this morning, losing his helmet visor in the process but also (they think) also part of his daily roadbook too.

It was in his pocket and “it fell out” says Mason who then had to basically use the other riders around him to navigate. “I felt like we were going slow but I didn’t know if the navigation was difficult or not, I just had to sit with everybody.

“Because of that we were riding really close and it made the chances to run into each other a lot higher,” Klein adds after a big crash with Adrien Van Beveren close to the finish.

“They were really lucky to get away with it,” according to Daniel Sanders who witnessed the whole thing from behind. In the Dakar small(ish) things can have big consequences and this one-time leader of the rally now has a lot of hard to do if he wants to close down an 18.42 minute deficit to the leader.

Aim for the tree, which tree?

The Dakar caravan headed further south and east today, from the capital Riyadh to Haradh where we spend one night before moving on again to Shaybah tomorrow which is within spitting distance of the United Arab Emirates.

We ‘re deep in oil field territory here, where the Saudi wealth is at its origin, and oil flames blaze on the horizon from the bivouac.

It’s already pretty empty and there were some vast areas covered with no nothing but the odd tree on stage ninbe. One of which hid a waypoint which a gaggle of riders wasted big lumps of time trying to find (the waypoint, not the tree, they found loads of trees in the end).

“There was one note on the roadbook that says follow tracks and there was just nothing there.” Explains Daniel Sanders who, along with Ross Branch, Mason Klein, and Pablo Quintanilla, blew big time loses looking for the invisible beacon to trip before they could move on.

“We rode up on top of a plateau and there was nothing there, no tracks or nothing noted on the road book. The next note was a WPC which means it doesn’t have an open arrow when you get close in the radius, and this was a disaster.

“There’s been so much rain there was just nothing to gauge off. The roadbook said to follow a track and we couldn’t see one track anywhere. There was a tree marked on the roadbook so I was basically searching through all the different trees I could see to find the waypoint, it was crazy for a while with me, Mason and Ross looking for it.”

With so many wheel tracks in different directions, it wasn’t easy to find even if you were later in the running order: “I kinda got lucky.” Says Price. “I knew I’d gone a little bit right and the CAP was a tiny bit off so I rode up a bank and saw two trees. I hoped and prayed that was the waypoint and it was, so I got through there quick.”

“Giant rivers in the middle of a desert”

The result of all the rain still pushing across Saudi Arabia are some sights in this supposedly hot and dry place you kinda don’t expect. And that’s not just this normally UK-based journalist speaking (where we do see rain often enough!), but from desert dweller Skyler Howes: “It was a demanding stage for sure with lots of water. It was crazy we were going through giant rivers in the middle of the desert. We knew it would be challenging after the rest day and today we had many more challenges thrown at us.”

Days of dunes are coming

The rally takes on a fresh twist for the next few days, on paper at least. The daily kilometre count in the specials are: 114km, 273km, 185km, 153km and 136km respectively for the rest of the race. It looks like it’s getting easy but don’t be fooled.

Competitors don’t know what they’re facing until they get clues in the briefing each night before and then, 20 minutes before the start, when they get their roadbooks. They might look like easy days ahead but if the riders have tasted a starter of sand already, these next few days are going to be the main course.

Also, Dakar is never easy so if it look short it is because the dunes are relentless and nuts, or the navigation is hard, or both (and more).

From tomorrow we head into the infamous Empty Quarter where there’s literally nothing but sand and dunes for days all the wy to Oman. This is where the race could take a twist, as sand specialists who’ve been looking forward to it get their chance.

A few of them might have already lost too much time but there are some fast sand riders in among the top 15 who could do some serious time recouping in the coming days.

Just play it smart

Overall, the smart guys are keeping a more even keel and, like we said earlier, there are two riders managing it better than the rest so far: Skyler Howes and Toby Price. Although the next seven or eight riders look like they’ve got time mountains to climb, it’s not out the question they could claw it back.

The yo-yo effect on the daily times seems to have returned after a first week of consistency. What effect it has over these next three days, two of which are marathon stages, we’ll wait and see.

Overall classification after stage 9 (top 20):

Photo Credit: Rally Zone + DPPI  + A.S.O. Gigi Soldano