It didn’t matter if you were a Dakar legend or a green rookie. Factory team or privateer. Bike, car, truck, or SSV — this stage didn’t discriminate. It just destroyed. One by one, they dropped. Some limped out. Some got medevacked. And the rest? They’re still haunted by it.
The year was 2021. The stage: Stage 5, Riyadh to Al Qaisumah.
Just 456 kilometers against the clock.
But what those roadbooks didn’t say — what even the satellites couldn’t predict — was that this would become one of the most savage days in Dakar history.
“It Wasn’t a Stage. It Was a Trap.”
It started with rocks. Sharp, hidden, car-killing rocks buried in fast-flowing sand tracks.
Then came the dunes. Not the graceful golden arcs you see in sponsor videos — these were broken, jagged monsters, luring drivers into steep drops, sudden compressions, and nothingness on the other side.
And worst of all? The navigation.
A hellish combination of cryptic notes and disappearing tracks that left even the best in the world wandering in circles.
Loeb got lost. Sainz got lost. Barreda got lost.
Some drove over 50 kilometers in the wrong direction before realizing they were nowhere.
Machines Quit. Bodies Quit. Minds Snapped.
You could hear it in the radio chatter.
The tension. The disbelief. The exhaustion.
– One rider dislocated his shoulder, taped it to his torso, and kept going.
– Another had to be airlifted after crashing into a hidden ravine at 120 km/h.
– At one point, over 40 bikes were stranded in the same zone, engines overheated, riders lost and hallucinating in the heat.
Even the mighty Kamaz trucks, born for punishment, crawled through the dunes like wounded animals.
Crews worked through the night just to rebuild what the stage had torn apart.
Peterhansel Called It “Insane” — And He’d Know
The man who’s won Dakar 14 times didn’t mince words.
He called it one of the toughest stages of his entire career.
Not just physically — psychologically.
Because it wasn’t just about surviving. It was about watching your competitors vanish.
Seeing tire tracks end abruptly at cliff edges.
Hearing silence on the comms.
Knowing the next drop might be the one that ends your rally — or your career.
When the Desert Decides
Dakar has always been unpredictable. But this?
This wasn’t just terrain.
This was the desert fighting back.
It didn’t care who you were.
It didn’t care what you’d won.
It just asked: Can you suffer? Can you adapt? Can you take this and keep going?
And for many, the answer was no.
Final Dune
There are hard stages.
There are iconic stages.
And then there’s the one that breaks the field.
Stage 5 of Dakar 2021 wasn’t famous because it crowned a winner.
It was infamous because it crowned the survivors.
So the next time someone says motorsport isn’t tough —
don’t show them Monaco.
Show them this:
Broken bikes. Lost cars. Grown men crying into the dust.
That’s rally. That’s Dakar. That was the stage from hell.
