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The 4,850-Mile Dakar Route Revealed, First Week Is a Doozy

2025 race is shorter overall than last year, but with a lot more racing.

December 17, 2024

There will be 3,237 miles of racing in 12 days, including two 48-hour stages in the first week.Dakar Rally

Dakar Rally director David Castera revealed the route and details on the next running of the desert race that begins in a few weeks. It starts on January 3 with a 49-mile prologue in Bisha, in the southwest of Saudi Arabia. After the course does a big figure eight, competitors head up the western side of the country to AlUla, where last year’s race started. Then they make a right turn east to Ha’il before veering southeast to the finale on January 17 in Shubaytah.

The full race will run 4,850 miles (7,805 kilometers) over 12 days, with 3,237 miles (5,209 kilometers) of special stages. With that meandering start further south, the total rally distance covering special stages and connecting, or liaison, stages is 60 miles less than last year’s running, but the special stages that make up the meat of the race cover 300 miles more than in 2024.

Organizers turned the first week into a grinder, moving the 48-hour stage up to the race’s second day, following that with one day of normal racing, then making stages 4 and 5 the marathon stages. The 48-hour challenge is a total of 600 miles over two days; racers have to stop at the first rest area after 5 p.m. on the first day, then cover the remainder on the second day. The 365-mile marathon stage also covers two days, the competitors forced to go without mechanical service overnight.

The non-motorcycle classes will also have it harder on five stages thanks to organizers creating separate routes for bikes and four-wheelers. Because the motos leave before the vehicles during common starts, the drivers can use the bike tracks as navigation references, a sort of open-book test. For these five stages, drivers and navigators are on their own.

Our own Sara Price is headed back to Dakar to try to improve on her stage win and fourth-place overall last year. She tuned up for Dakar by running in the Dubai International Baja, but it didn’t go well. Her South Racing Can-Am Team entered three UTVs. The results show they got hit with time penalties on the first day for not completing the stage and fell to the back of the order. She’ll be hoping for better at Dakar.

To get all up to date on what’s about to hit the desert, Red Bull has this primer on what’s involved in each stage, and this primer on what each competitor needs to do to finish those stages. Dakar itself is here to fill you in on the UTV classifications and show an animated version of the route. The 340 entries in next year’s race should be in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, on December 30 to get their vehicles, New Year’s Eve is a day of private testing, scrutineering and briefings take up the next two days, then it’s on for real.

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