Sunderland went into the relatively short 164km run from Bisha to Jeddah of nearly seven minutes over his nearest rival, Honda’s Pablo Quintanilla.
Despite running on the second stage, Sunderland did enough to maintain his advantage to the finish, dropping just 3m25s to Quintanilla to beat the Chilean by 3m27s in the final standings.
It marks Sunderland’s second triumph on the Dakar, adding to his 2017 success, and a first in the event’s Saudi Arabian era for the KTM group – ending a run of two wins for Honda.
Matthias Walkner completed the overall podium for KTM behind Quintanilla, 7m43s down on Sunderland.
Dubai-based Briton Sunderland had controlled the 2022 edition of the Dakar most of the way, first seizing the advantage on Stage 2 and holding a small lead over the chasing pack into the rest day.
A difficult Stage 7 dropped Sunderland down the order, but he soon fought back to win Stage 8 and take back the top spot. He was briefly usurped by Adrien van Beveren after Stage 10,…
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