Daniel Sanders: "I was expecting something more difficult"

Dakar 2026 | Stage 1 | YANBU > YANBU
January 4 ^th 2026 - 12:28 [GMT + 3]

The title holder dropped a minute to the winner of the prologue, his teammate Edgar Canet. "Chucky" expected such slim margins and is now looking forward to tougher challenges.

"It was quite basic. I was expecting something more difficult. It's hard to make a difference in these conditions. I slipped up a few times with tricky notes and lost some time, but I'm happy not to lose more because I wasn't feeling great today. It was windy and rocky. The terrain was hard to read. My helmet was getting buffeted by the wind, so I had a hard time focusing on the road book. It was the same terrain on which I won stage 1 in 2023. I remembered it as basic navigation on easy terrain, so I knew the margins would be slim. I'm looking forward to tomorrow and a stage that's more than just twisting the throttle all the way back, like today. I didn't go into the red today, I hope we can push harder tomorrow."