After an eventful first six stages to the 2023 Dakar Rally, stage seven was cancelled for the bikes and quads due to the weather. They instead spent the day taking the shortest route (over roads!) to the start of Stage Eight, in the hopes that the weather would be amenable to that stage going as planned on Sunday, January 8.
Thankfully, the weather cooperated—and so, all competitors got back in the saddle for the 346-kilometer length of Stage Eight as scheduled. Daniel Sanders was the first rider to get a fastest time declaration at kilometer 47, as he came out well ahead of Pablo Quintanilla, Luciano Benavides, Toby Price, and Skyler Howes. However, he didn’t stay at the top of the time rankings for very long, as Mason Klein soon came through and set a fast time that was a full 50 seconds quicker than that of Sanders.
