Page 112 - Australian Motorcycle News (January 2020)

Dakar

BRABEC BECAME (ONE OF)

THE FIRST AMERICAN TO

1EVER WIN DAKAR

BE IT BIKES, cars, trucks, quads or UTVs,
an American had never once tasted the
winner’s champagne leading into the
2020 edition the Dakar Rally.
They’d come close; Danny LaPorte
rode his Cagiva Elefant 900 to second
place behind Stephane Peterhansel
(Yamaha) in 1998, and Jimmy Lewis (BMW)
and Chris Blais (KTM) both celebrated third-
place finishes in 2000 and 2007, respectively. But Ricky Brabec
made history when he piloted his Monster Energy Honda
CRF450 almost 8000km from Jeddah to Qiddiya to win the 2020
Dakar Rally. He was joined on the podium by Pablo Quintanilla
(+16m26s) and Toby Price (+24m06s).
The headlines weren’t all Brabec’s, however, because
American Casey Currie also piloted his Can-Am to Dakar victory
in the side-by-side category this year.

Dakar’s first appearance in the
Middle East looked a lot different
to Africa or South America

YAMAHA’S BAD LUCK CONTINUED

LADY LUCK WAS cruel to
the factory Yamaha squad
once again in 2020, with
both of its lead factory riders
sidelined out of the rally by
the end of just the third stage.
Adrien Van Beveren suffered

a nasty crash during the
second stage that saw him
withdraw from the rally for
the third consecutive year,
this time with a medical evacuation due
to a fractured collarbone.
Just hours after Van Beveren’s
rally-ending crash, Xavier De Soultrait
picked up a nasty wrist injury in what he
called a silly, low-speed crash. He cut the veins in his wrist pretty badly, and
while some tightly applied race tape got him back to the bivouac where the
doctors stitched him up ready to go again the following day, it only got him
300km into the next day’s special before the Frenchman called time on his
seventh Dakar attempt.
“I have no feeling in my wrist,” he said.
“I went over a couple of stones and tried to accelerate by dropping my
elbow. But I can’t control the bike properly. I’ve tried, but I just can’t do it.”
It left all of Yamaha’s hopes on Argentina’s Franco Caimi, who scored three
top-10 finishes for an eighth overall ranking.

110 amcn.com.au