Dakar Rally 2024: Ricky Brabec Wins The Race

Sadly, no Canadians raced the Dakar Rally moto category this year, but our neighbours to the south have good reason to be proud of their own country’s effort. American rider Ricky Brabec sealed the deal on his second Dakar Rally championship.

Brabec raced smart, waiting for much of the fast-guy competition to crash and burn in the early stages. The Honda rider waited until rest day to really start pressing hard, and from then on, he was the safe bet to win.

Ross Branch was second overall this year, riding a Hero factory machine to its first-ever podium. It’s a big accomplishment for the team, which grew out of the old Speedbrain organization (which went to work with Hero after Honda split off to do its own thing). Branch is getting older (he’s 37 now) and has limited time to challenge for the overall win; however, he’s increasingly becoming a fan favorite due to his positive attitude and his willingness to help other riders. Let’s hope he stays in this race for years to come. Racing is often a game of focused, robot-like concentration, and to have a rider who’s honest about his own shortcomings and obviously in it for the sheer thrill of speed is great to see.

Adrien Van Beveren took third. Hard as it is to believe, this is the best the French rider has ever done. His days with Yamaha were filled with crashes or breakdowns, and now that he’s with Honda, his luck seems to have improved (although he still took a ride down the highway to the danger zone, colliding with a pack of camels on Stage 11). AVB rides to win, every single stage, and that’s his biggest obstacle to overcome at this stage of his career.

KTM’s factory team had an off year, with Kevin Benavides winning Stage 12 to wiggle up the standings to fourth overall, with teammate Toby Price behind him. It’s a bit of a bummer to see Price’s drop in speed over the past couple of years; he had a blistering pace in his younger years, and was the last true alien rider at Dakar, capable of opening a stage and also setting the best time while doing all the work of navigation. There’s considerable rumor that Price will leave the bike category in 2025 and move to a four-wheeled vehicle. He has raced trophy trucks in the past (he actually owns one), so such a move is not unthinkable.

Speaking of racers moving from two to four wheels: ex-Yamaha rider Xavier de Soultrait won the SSV category, despite a massive time penalty at the last minute. And in the cars overall ranking, Laia Sanz, aka the Queen of the Desert, finished 15th.

It’ll be tough for anyone to ever replace Sanz’ record as Dakar’s top female rider, year after year, but Jane Daniels’ results for the Fantic factory team have some people suggesting she’s the heir apparent. In her first year at Dakar (and really, her first year of proper rally raid), Daniels finished 48th overall. Can she match up to Sanz’ record? Probably not—no other female motorcyclist is likely to, as Sanz dominated women’s trials competition for years and was also successful in enduro. But if Daniels continues to race Dakar, she will probably be the premier female rider of this generation, based on her grit and talent we saw this year.

Finally: For the first half of the race, the most-talked-about factory team wasn’t Honda or KTM or Husqvarna or any other established marque. It was Chinese manufacturer Kove, with American Mason Klein on a satellite bike. Klein had a mechanical take him out of the race mid-way, and crashes and breakdowns left Kove with only one rider crossing the finish line outside the “Dakar Experience” category… and one Italian rider, who was representing that country’s importer.

In other words: Not as good a result as last year, when Kove had three factory riders run the race start-to-finish. But they are determined to climb the standings, and with a whole year to test their latest-gen rally raid bike, we expect to see them challenge hard in 2025, giving the fans a lot to talk about.

Final Standings Of 2024 Dakar Rally