After twelve long stages and over 38 hours of competitive racing, Sam Sunderland from Poole in England, has just won his second Dakar Rally, this time on a GASGAS. The Brit, on his KTM Rally Replica-derived GASGAS only actually won one stage (stage 8) but his overall victory just goes to show how important consistency is in an event like the Dakar Rally.

Sam?s last Dakar win was back in 2017 when he was riding for the KTM Factory Racing outfit. For those of you that don?t know, the GASGAS brand is owned by KTM, so it was only really a sideways move. Never the less, it?s the first ever Dakar Rally win for a GASGAS branded motorcycle, and I?m fairly sure they are all pretty ?stoked? about it. And so they should be.

Flavien Duhamel / Red Bull Content Pool
In the end, Sam Sunderland won by three minutes and twenty-seven seconds from Chilean Pablo Quintanilla who was in turn another three minutes and twenty seconds in front of Austrian Mathias Walkner. That means after nearly forty hours of racing, the top three were separated by less than seven minutes. Wowza.

DNF

And perhaps it would have been closer had there not been so many of the high profile front runners falling by the wayside over the last twelve days. Danilo Petrucci the ex-MotoGP rider who won a stage in his first ever Dakar, wasn?t actually in the standings because he broke down on day three. Kevin Benavides, last years Dakar winner, also had a breakdown, putting him out of the running. Early s...