It’s somewhere between 40 and 50 degrees Celsius. You’re in the middle of nowhere with nothing but endless desert ahead, lost. The minutes are ticking by. With just a roadbook to keep you on the right route, hoping you hit your waypoints, you’re forced to back-track and figure out your mistake…
This year’s Dakar has already created many talking points and legendary tales that will be told for years to come as we head into today’s rest day in Riyadh. Danilo Petrucci is the man of the moment, having taken his first stage win – and many by surprise – just 53 days after hanging up his MotoGP™ leathers and embarking on what many thought would be a near impossible task for the Italian.
As you’re preparing for your new year celebrations, spare a thought for Red Bull KTM Factory Racing’s Toby Price. An offroad legend, Dakar winner and globally loved racer, Toby is in the final stages of prep for the biggest event on the calendar, the Dakar rally, having spent the last few months living in a hotel room. We caught up with the Aussie just a short time ago to talk about hotel food, training for the big one and a passion for all things mechanical.
Matthias Walkner is the 2021 FIM Cross-Country Rallies World Champion. Crowned in Morocco with a round of the five-event series to spare, the Red Bull KTM Factory Racing rider lifted his second world title in rally after an exciting campaign aboard his KTM 450 RALLY machine.
Kilometer after kilometer the concentration, the energy, the navigation, the physicality and all while keeping the throttle absolutely twisted. Desert dunes, to rocky mountains, the Dakar Rally is a battle of endurance for both rider and machine.
The Dakar Rally is one of the most notoriously difficult races on the planet. With the 2021 event just weeks away, we caught up with KTM Rally Team manager Jordi Viladoms to get an insight into Dakar, what’s new for 2021 and the team’s goals.
As the dust settles on the 2020 Dakar Rally, which marked a new chapter for the event at a new location in Saudi Arabia, we at the KTM Blog have been taking a look through the breath-taking images from this year’s race.
After the amazing 1st-2nd-3rd podium in Lima and the 1st-2nd podium in Abu Dhabi, the KTM rally team is again READY TO RACE – this time by taking the road less travelled, diving into the unknown. “I am intrigued by the unknown,” says the team manager Jordi Viladoms, “which is good, but we still might be troubled by some questions.”
With the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge, the first KTM Ultimate Race checked off and the big news about the Dakar Rally moving to Saudi Arabia, we wanted to elaborate on the moment’s hot topic.
We caught up with KTM´s Dakar 1-2-3 finishers and asked them about their after-Dakar life. Is it paradise?
