With 15 seconds to spare, Ricky Brabec guided his Monster Vitality Honda CRF450 RALLY to victory within the latest Argentine Desafio Ruta 40 Rally.
Having already triumphed within the 2024 Dakar Rally earlier this yr, the Argentina end result additional underscored Brabec’s dominance within the 2024 World Rally Raid Championship, elevated his lead within the level standings and fortified his place as one of many world’s elite off-road motorbike racers.
However with summer time months, downtime, and using motos having all a part of his latest day-to-day existence, the time is now approaching for Brabec and the Honda HRC FIM World Rally-Raid Championship effort to get again to work.
“We’ve sturdiness testing arising in two weeks,” he mentioned. “After sturdiness testing, we’ve got Vegas to Reno race held by Finest In The Desert. After that comes extra sturdiness and extra testing after which from that we mainly have September open and free after which we go to Africa on the finish of September for the Rallye Du Maroc and the ultimate spherical of the World Rally-Raid Championship.”
In creating the Honda HRC CRF450 Rally machine for the 7,000-to 8,000-kilomoter World Rally-Raid odysseys Brabec competes in, the HRC Honda Racing group conjures up confidence.
“With the sturdiness aspect of testing, we go to Glamis, we received to Barstow, we go to Dumont Dunes,” he mentioned. “We journey round to search out completely different terrains and completely different elevations and completely different situations and whatnot. What goes into it’s a little little bit of the whole lot, ? We’ve engine technicians, we’ve got wiring technicians, we’ve got chassis technicians, we’ve got mainly a technician for each piece of the motorbike there for mainly an entire month.
“We’re making small modifications right here and there, we’re giving the best route, the incorrect route, in order that we they’ll determine what to enhance and what to not enhance. Being a part of it’s actually cool as a result of being fairly clean with the phrases and actually specializing in what you need to change or what you’re feeling with the bike may also help them make their job approach simpler and likewise assist the bike enhance.’
Is a number of what in the end goes into the HRC CRF450 Rally the tip results of Ricky Brabec placing his thumbprint on the machine?
“Sure and no,” he mentioned. “There are bits and items of it I’ve been concerned with, however total Honda is aware of beforehand what works and what’s not going to work. They ship a extremely good motorbike just about off the ground, after which we make small changes.”
Brabec spoke to the unknowns of competing within the World Rally-Raid Championship, the place riders usually spend 12 hours a day navigating. rocks, ditches, holes, dry rivers, dunes, sq. ended bumps and high-speed drop-offs.
“We don’t know what’s arising at us,” he mentioned. “They provide us a roadbook and say, ‘Okay, nicely right here is the roadbook. Hopefully the whole lot is marked.’ This all comes with expertise of racing within the desert. Studying terrain at a far distance and going quick doing it whereas studying a roadbook could be a problem.
“I’ve been doing it for 10 years now with the rally stuff. You may by no means study an excessive amount of. I’m nonetheless studying and nonetheless practising. Yeah, we’ve gained the Dakar Rally twice, however that doesn’t make you the perfect navigator on the market or the quickest individual on the market. There are at all times areas the place you possibly can enhance. That’s what we work on yr spherical. Simply rising up in District 37 and studying terrain is the place I’ve gotten a number of the expertise from. You already know, with a number of the areas world wide which have deserts, these deserts seems just like the desert that we’ve got right here. It’s all acquainted and it seems, kind of, the identical. One desert may be extra inexperienced and one desert may be much less rocky, however the desert is the desert and it’s the desert for a motive.
“Like I mentioned, we don’t actually know the place we’re going on the market. We’re simply following our roadbook and our roadbook has our mileage on it and has the route on it and has the risks on it. We get the roadbook 20 minutes earlier than we begin and that’s barely sufficient time to place the roadbook in your bike. After that, it’s staying centered and staying mentally within the recreation is of actually massive significance for this race. Earlier than we get there you are able to do some investigation, just like the lay of the land and stuff like that, however we don’t technically know the place we’re going till we’ve already been there.
Subsequent up for Brabec and the Monster Vitality Honda Workforce would be the World Rally-Raid Rallye Du Maroc on Octoer 5 by means of October 11, 2024.
“We’re mainly mellowing out proper now, however when October comes round we’re going to be full fuel once more and coaching and again to Moracco,” he mentioned.
“I’m undoubtedly already trying ahead to Morocco regardless that we’ve got two months. To get ready for Morocco, sturdiness would be the first step as a result of we’re going to have some new items and new components on the bike. We’ll go coaching, we’ll do some roadbooks, we’ll keep in form and we’ll keep wholesome and arrive to Morocco at one hundred pc. Then we’ll go from Morocco to Dakar and attempt to spike proper in the midst of Dakar so we’ve got power each single day.”
