BarcelonaCatalan driver Laia Sanz has had to abandon the 2025 Dakar Rally after suffering an accident in the first stage, so she will not fulfill her challenge of reaching the finish line of the race for the fifteenth time in a row. The KH-7 team driver has been forced to withdraw from the race after FIA stewards examined the vehicle and determined that the roll bar had been left damaged after an untimely bell turn in the final part of the special.
Laia Sanz will therefore not be able to complete the route from start to finish for the first time in 15 years. Fortunately, both she and her co-driver, the Italian Maurizio Gerini, came out of the accident unscathed and were able to reach the end of the stage on their own, after making the relevant emergency repairs to the same track, although several hours late. A frustrating end, just in the first days of the competition. Despite his good results, this year Sanz had suffered to be able to reach the Dakar, since he is not part of an official team. Despite having driven little, he told ARA before flying to Saudi Arabia that he was confident he could fight to be among the first 20 cars. It couldn’t be.
Laia Sanz suffered an accident with the Century CR-6T in the first stage when the car overturned at kilometer 330 after hitting a stone: “We had run out of third gear at kilometer 20. Then, in the dust, all our navigation instruments had stopped working, so we had decided to go very calmly to finish the stage” explained the pilot herself when she thought she could still continue in the race.
“With 70 kilometers to go, we crushed a rock that we hadn’t seen because of the dust and overturned. I’m very hurt, because we were doing very well, although some things had happened to us today. I thought it could be a good year”, added the Catalan afterwards. Laia Sanz had reached her fifteenth Dakar and her fourth on four wheels, with the triple challenge of surpassing her record of completed editions, improving the absolute fifteenth place achieved in the last edition and fighting for victory in the 4×2 category.
Source: www.ara.cat
