Overview
- Daniel Sanders was docked six minutes for exceeding a 50 km/h zone at 98 km/h, handing the Stage 6 win to Ricky Brabec and cutting the overall motorcycle gap to under a minute.
- Luciano Benavides won Stage 5 in the desert marathon, and after Stage 6 he sits third in the general classification, roughly ten minutes behind the lead.
- Nasser al Attiyah won the Hail–Riyadh special to reclaim the cars overall lead from Henk Lategan, with Nani Roma up to third and Carlos Sainz in fourth heading into the rest day.
- Marathon stages 4–5 ran with no external assistance and spartan bivouac provisions, contributing to high attrition including reported retirements and severe mechanical setbacks such as Edgar Canet’s rear-wheel failure.
- In Challenger, Lucas Del Río and navigator Bruno Jacomy won Stage 5, with Jacomy dedicating the result to Juan Cruz Yacopini, who remains in intensive care; separately, Jesús Calleja withdrew after a violent rollover and criticized course signage.