Dakar 2017, Stage 12: Karyakin takes honours in quads race

Karyakin, who took a career-best fourth place in his third Dakar participation last year, had entered Saturday's final 64km stage with a lead of more than an hour over Casale as he won three of the four preceding stages.

While Casale was the race's most-fancied entrant from the Dakar's home continent, several fellow South Americans looked in a strong position early on – but early leader Marcelo Medeiros of Brazil crashed out, while local favourite Walter Nosiglia of Bolivia exited through a technical problem.

Race debutant Simon Vitse thus lead the category heading into the rest day, ahead of Karyakin and fellow French competitor Alex Dutrie.

Vitse's victory challenge, however, fell apart on the second day of week two, as he spent several hours at a standstill before calling it quits. Over the two next stages, Dutrie would also drop out of contention.

This left it between the two Yamahas of Karyakin and Casale, but the fight proved rather one-sided, Karyakin gradually increasing his advantage over the Chilean before picking up 55 minutes during the penultimate stage.

Casale won the final Rio Cuarto stage on Saturday morning, but it was only enough to dent Karyakin's advantage by just over a minute - giving the Russian a final winning margin of 1h16m24s.

Argentine Pablo Copetti was third, a full four hours down on Karyakin, followed by Rafal Sonik and Axel Dutrie.

Final results - Top 10:

Pos.	Rider	Quad	Time/Gap
1	Sergey Karyakin	Yamaha	39hr18m52s
2	Ignacio Casale	Yamaha	+1hr14m51s
3	Pablo Copetti	Yamaha	+4hr20m19s
4	Rafal Sonik	Yamaha	+5hr33m29s
5	Axel Dutrie	Yamaha	+5hr45m24s
6	Bruno da Costa	Yamaha	+5hr57m18s
7	Santiago Hansen	Honda	+5hr57m19s
8	Nelson Sanabria	Yamaha	+6hr11m46s
9	Daniel Domaszewski	Honda	+6hr39m45s
10	Kamil Wisniewski	Can Am	+8hr06m09s