South African pride at the 2025 Dakar Rally

The 2025 Dakar Rally was intense, delivering joy and heartache in spades across the field. We look at how the South Africans fared in the 47th edition of the world’s toughest race.

March 2, 2025

CAR Magazine 7 minutes read

For the first time since 2009, a South African competitor in the Car category was in true contention of winning the gruelling Dakar Rally. Toyota Gazoo Racing South Africa’s (TGRSA) Henk Lategan and navigator Brett Cummings led for nine of the 12 stages but had to settle for second place, behind Saudi Arabian Yazeed Al Rajhi and his co-driver Timo Gottschalk (Germany), competing for Overdrive Racing in a Toyota Hilux.

Lategan and Cummings took control early on and made steady progress over the two-week duration. Though things looked good and their pace was steady, navigational errors on Stage 9, compounded by a tyre puncture, cost them nearly five minutes in the process. Although they managed to resume their race, this stage proved decisive, as the duo lost out on P1 by just 3 minutes and 57 seconds.

Following the event, Lategan said in an official team statement: “It was a bittersweet race for us, to come all this way, do two weeks of racing over thousands of kilometres, late nights, early mornings, and then to miss out by four minutes!

“But to get onto the podium is fantastic. It’s our first podium and it’s a great achievement. It’s amazing what the team’s done and what we could manage with this race. We’ll keep trying, we’ll keep pushing this year, we’ll improve the car, we’ll improve ourselves, we’ll gain more experience, and come back stronger next year.”

Lategan has been a stellar driver for TGRSA over the last few years. His antics behind the wheel of the rally-prepped Hilux have garnered widespread respect and the team will undoubtedly make sure the 30-year-old is part of its future. Notably, Lategan’s Dakar journey has not been without setbacks. His 2021 race ended prematurely with a shoulder injury on Day 5, 2022 yielded a P31 despite winning two stages, and 2023 saw him finish P5 in the overall standings. He did not compete in the 2024 race due to another shoulder injury.

While some may see the racer’s results over the years as an expectancy given the Dakar’s reputation and nature, Lategan knows that he can secure the biggest win on the Rally-Raid calendar, which is what he set out to do in 2025. He has won many rally titles over the years and competed on both the local and international circuits. Underlining just how good Lategan and Cummings are, the duo won their fourth South African Rally-Raid Championship in 2024 and were also crowned the 2024 FIA T1+ champions.

Understandably, losing out on their maiden Dakar win by less than four minutes will sting, but they have proven a force to be reckoned with, and next year’s event might just yield the results they deserve.

Although the P2 is tough to swallow, Glenn Crompton, Vice President: Marketing (Toyota SA Motors), praised the TGRSA crews: “It’s an incredible experience. The team, the car, brilliant. To be here amongst the best of the best in the world in the toughest race, and to finish on the podium, to lead the race, to win stages with such a young team, it’s just incredible. I think everyone back in South Africa must be so proud of the team, because they’re playing with the big boys here and they’re delivering.”

As it goes in life, you must take the sweet with the bitter. And this rang true for TGRSA as a legendary career came to a premature end. Giniel de Villiers called time on an illustrious Dakar career that stretches back to all the way to 2003. Turning 53 in March, he knew that 2025 would be his last race, but neither he nor navigator Dirk von Zitzewitz expected their 14th Dakar to end so abruptly.

Von Zitzewitz injured his neck during Stage 6, and a post-stage medical examination deemed the German navigator unfit to continue. This was not what anyone expected, especially as this duo is one of the most consistent finishers in Dakar history. It is also the first time De Villiers withdrew from the Dakar. Even so, he understands that in this race, you must take the good with the bad.

Ahead of Stage 7, the morning after officially withdrawing from the race De Villiers said: “It’s unfortunate but obviously the most important thing is that Dirk is okay. I spoke to [Dirk] again and they did some other checks on him, and he has a stable fracture of the C6 vertebra. This was our 14th Dakar together, and we’ve had some great times together with many highlights and many disappointments. We know this race inside out and you’ve got to take the good with the bad.”

Over 22 Dakar Rallies, De Villiers had only finished outside the top 10 once (2007) but returned with a vengeance in 2009 by winning the entire event with Von Zitzewitz alongside him. He also had 15 finishes in the top 5 and appeared on the podium on eight occasions. The South African also holds the record for consecutive participations (21 between 2003 – 2024) without a single retirement.

Elsewhere, South African competitors made the absolute most of their time in this year’s Dakar, even if some outcomes didn’t go entirely to plan. Century Racing Factory Team’s Brian Baragwanath and navigator Leonard Cremer finished in P10 overall. This is a massive improvement over their P94 last year, which shows the lengths to which the team went in 2025. It is only the third time that Baragwanath and Cremer tackled the Dakar together, following on from their 2023 and 2024 participations. Their teammates, Mark Corbett/Juan Möhr, withdrew from the Dakar ahead of Stage 6.

TGRSA’s Saood Variawa and his French navigator Francois Cazalet crossed the finish line in P20 – three places down on their P17 in 2024. Cazalet is an experienced hand at Dakar, having competed in every event since 2020, while this was only Variawa’s second attempt. Despite their developing partnership, the duo won Stage 3 of this year’s race, with Variawa in the process becoming the youngest stage winner yet, at just 19-years-old.

Reflecting on just his second Dakar, Variawa said: “It’s amazing! If I look back, last year was obviously the first year for us. This year was a lot tougher, and I think the first week they (the organisers) wanted to break us. But the car was amazing. I’m really happy to finish my second Dakar on my second attempt.”

64-year-old Zimbabwean William Battershill competed in his first-ever Dakar, linking with experienced campaigner, Stuart Gregory, as his navigator. Having competed in every Dakar since 2019 (bar 2021), Gregory aided Battershill in fulfilling a lifelong dream. They finished a respectable P38 racing for the Century Racing team, albeit 24 hours 24 minutes 41 seconds off the race winner’s time. SA’s Henry Köhne navigated for Germany’s Daniel Schröder, with the pair finishing P47 of the 48 finishers. They crossed the finish line 93 hours behind Al Rajhi.

South Africa was well represented in the Bike category too, with Michael Docherty, racing for the BAS World KTM Racing Team, finishing in P5 in the Rally2 category, and P14 overall. Although he has been based in Dubai for the better part of a decade, he competes in events under the South African flag. Docherty’s participation in this year’s event is a sweet moment in many ways, given that he was airlifted to a medical facility after a nasty incident on Stage 2 in 2024.

Dwain Barnard and William Avenant were the only other two riders to have seen the checkered flag.

Docherty’s teammate, Bradley Cox, withdrew from the race after Stage 5. The rider, son of SA motorsport legend Alfie Cox, crashed his bike 100 metres into the stage, then stopped at the 48 km mark for a medical examination. The findings ruled him out of the remainder of the Dakar. He was P12 overall at the time.

Cox wrote on social media: [It’s] never the ending you want, but you know it can happen in this sport [in the] blink of an eye. 100 m off [Stage 5’s start] was a step that I hit, and the bike stepped out, and that’s all she wrote. I got up straight away and fixed what I needed to continue, but 50 km later I started to have a lot of pain in my neck and was struggling to hold my head up.

“Sometimes we want the story to go different but, in this case, I put my health first. After a lot of scans and some hours in the ER, I am very fortunate nothing is broken; just going to be sore for a few days. Thank you to everyone for the messages and calls I appreciate it beyond words. Brad 2 – Dakar 2. I’ll be back.”

The other South African rider who also failed to see the finish line in Dakar 2025 is Mare Aaron.