British motorcycle rally driver Sam Sunderland won the first stage of the Dakar Rally in Argentina on Sunday.
The Dubai-based KTM rider won the 144-kilomtre special preliminary stage from Buenos Aires, where the race began, to the village of Villa Carlos Paz, completing the stage in 1 hour 18 minutes 57 seconds, five seconds ahead of Goncalves Paulo of Puerto Rico and 1min 12sec ahead of defending champion Marc Coma.
Earlier, Coma got the 2015 Dakar Rally underway in Buenos Aires in a morning ceremony.
The KTM team leader set off on the gruelling 9,000 kilometres trek through Argentina, Chile and Bolivia two minutes ahead of his main rival, countryman Joan Barreda on a Honda, who arrived fourth 1min 41sec behind Sunderland.
Arriving fifth of the 157 riders to finish the stage from the 161 who began it was Alain Duclos of France, 2min 8sec behind the lead time.
“It’s difficult to judge your strategy based on the first day because you still don’t know who’s pulled out all the stops,” Sunderland told the Dakar Rally website. “It’s also important not to go all in, you’ve got to leave something for the other stages.
“However, I think I had a good special and that’s always a reason to be happy. The bike didn’t miss a beat, it was very fast and I probably posted a good time. I’m a contender ... for the first day.
“I hope I’m also a contender at the end, but we’ve only covered 175 kilometres and there’s still a long road before us.”
The first stage covers 838 kilometres to the town of Villa Carlos Paz with just 175 kilometres of timed sections. Sunderland led after the first 144km connection section and second 175km special stage.
Riders were still to finish the longest, 519km connection section to complete the first day.
The cars, with last year’s winner Nani Roma the first to go in his Mini, followed the bike and quad entries on Sunday.
The Spaniard was followed by 2011 winner Nasser Al Attiyah of Qatar, also in a Mini, with 11-time former champion Stephane Peterhansel next up.
The veteran Frenchman will be driving a Peugeot, who are returning to the Dakar Rally for the first time in 25 years and he will be out to prevent the Minis from completing another clean sweep of the auto podium.
Peterhansel took second place last year for Mini behind then teammate Roma.
Peugeot also have in their line-up 2010 winner Carlos Sainz, a two-time world rally champion from Spain who will be racing for his third team in the rally.
Peugeot won the Dakar for four successive years from 1987-1990 when it was still staged in Africa before pulling out.
This year’s event, the seventh in South America since its enforced transfer for security reasons from Africa, is the 37th of all time.
The 2015 race takes the Dakar caravan from the Atacama, the driest spot on the planet, to the Iquique dunes and crossing the Andes at the highest point on Argentina’s Route 40, the 4,970m mountain pass of Abra del Acay.
In all, there will be 4,600km of special stages including a 781km time trial from the Bolivian city of Uyuni to Chile’s Pacific Coast.
The rally will finish back in in Buenos Aires on January 17 with four category winners - cars, motorbikes, quads and trucks.
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