Qatari driver Nasser Al-Attiyah has won the Dakar Rally for a fifth time.
The 52-year-old Toyota driver defended his title, finishing more than an hour ahead of France’s Sebastien Loeb.
Loeb, 48, a nine-time world rally champion, was runner-up for the second year in a row but made history with a record six consecutive stage wins.
Brazil’s Lucas Moraes was the third driver home, while Argentine rider Kevin Benavides, 34, won his second title in the motorbike event.
Al-Attiyah took the overall lead after the third stage of the iconic rally, which started on 31 December and took competitors from the beaches of the Red Sea to the sands of the Arabian Gulf in Dammam, across 14 stages and almost 5,000 kilometres.
He built up a commanding advantage in the opening week of the race before adopting a safety-first approach to maintain his lead, as Loeb reeled off the stage wins, surpassing the five consecutive stages won by Finland’s Ari Vatanen in 1989.
In the Original motorbike category, where competitors are forbidden from having any outside assistance, Hampshire rider James Hillier became the first former Isle of Man TT winner to complete the event.
Despite dislocating his collarbone following a crash on stage five, the 37-year-old continued to the finish line, coming home 13th of 15 finishers in his category in an overall time of 70 hours five minutes 40 seconds.
‘We still have so many deserts to explore’
This was the fourth edition of the rally to be held in Saudi Arabia after it was moved there in 2020.
Organisers have confirmed the race will continue in the state for “the next few years”, with race director David Castera saying “we still have so many deserts to explore”.
Castera also rejected claims that the rally was being used by the Gulf kingdom, often criticised over its human rights record, for “sportswashing”.
He said: “I’m not here to play politics but to organise a sporting event which has the legitimacy to exist here because the terrain suits it.”
The rally was first held in 1979, with competitors initially racing from Paris to Dakar, the capital of Senegal, but has more recently been staged in South America, before moving to Saudi Arabia three years ago.