Sunderland grew up in Britain before relocating to Dubai, a base that gave him ready access to the desert terrain central to his discipline. He rose through regional competition in the United Arab Emirates, winning the UAE National Baja Championship in consecutive years (2010 and 2011) before graduating to international rally raid events.
Sunderland made his Dakar debut in 2012 aboard a Honda. The event ended early when an electrical fault forced retirement on the third stage. The following year he was unable to compete after breaking both wrists during pre-event testing — a setback that underlined the physical toll that preparation for Dakar can exact even before the race begins.
His fortunes improved sharply when he joined the factory Honda team for the 2014 edition. On stage two he became the first British rider to win a Dakar stage since John Deacon in 1998, a landmark result that moved him to third in the overall classification. Engine failure the following day ended his challenge, but the performance had established his credentials at the top level.
Later in 2014 Sunderland was recruited to the factory KTM team, then the dominant force in Dakar motorcycle racing. He quickly demonstrated his value in other rally raid events: he won stages at the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge, finished second at the Morocco Rally that year, then won the Morocco Rally outright in 2015 and claimed the Qatar Sealine Rally in 2016.
The 2017 Dakar Rally brought the culmination of his development as a premier-level competitor. Sunderland won the motorcycle category overall, becoming the first Briton to win the Dakar Rally outright. The achievement earned him the Royal Automobile Club's Segrave Trophy for 2017, awarded to honour the outstanding British demonstration of the possibilities of transport.
The years immediately following his 2017 victory brought mixed fortunes. At the 2018 Dakar Rally, Sunderland won stages one and three before crashing out of contention in stage four. In the 2019 edition — the last held in South America — he won stages five and seven and finished third overall, a result that confirmed his continued competitiveness despite the earlier misfortune.
The 2020 Dakar Rally, the first staged in Saudi Arabia, ended in injury when Sunderland crashed out in stage five, requiring him to withdraw from the event.
Sunderland returned to the top step of the Dakar podium in 2022, winning the motorcycle category for the second time. The gap of five years between his two Dakar victories illustrated both the extreme difficulty of the event and the consistency required to mount winning campaigns across multiple editions. His 2022 win came after several years of attrition and near-misses, reinforcing his status as one of the most decorated British rally raid riders of his generation.
Sunderland's two Dakar victories place him among a small group of riders to have won the event multiple times, a distinction that carries particular weight given the lottery of mechanical failures, navigation errors, and physical demands that characterise the world's most demanding off-road endurance race. His 2017 win broke a long drought for British riders at the top of Dakar's overall classification and drew renewed attention to rally raid as a discipline within British motorsport.