CHENNAI: The 2017 Dakar Rally is days away and it will have a lot more Indianness than usual. For the first time, two Indians will be participating in what is thought of as the world’s toughest endurance event and both will be propped up by Indian teams.
Bengaluru’s CS Santosh will ride with Hero Motorsports, while city-mate KP Aravind will ride under the colours of TVS-Sherco Rally Factory team. With TVS having been involved in the Dakar for three years now, it was only fitting that an Indian—that too a former Raid de Himalaya winner—got to don their colours. “Our racing partner Sherco Motorcycles is equally excited about having an Indian rider in Aravind and has given him the best training both in navigation and riding,” TVS Team Racing head Arvind Pangaonkar said.
“From a technical aspect, our engineers and mechanics have worked with the Sherco team to prepare Aravind’s bike for Dakar Rally 2017,” he added.
“Our race mechanic R
Prakasam will be the primary support for Aravind. He has worked closely with Aravind for other rally events earlier this year. In fact, he had supported the Sherco TVS Rally Factory team for Dakar Rally last year too. The motorcycle prepared by him had successfully completed the Dakar 2016 without reliability issues. Aravind has been in a great form throughout OiLibya Rally of Morocco and is working on maintaining his form for Dakar.”
TVS was one of the first two-wheeler companies from India to foray into racing and started a one-make two-wheeler championship as early as 1994. They tied up with French motorcycle company Sherco to participate in the 2015 Dakar Rally, something they did the next year as well. This year’s rally will mark their third attempt at cracking the race which will be held from January 2 to 14 across Argentina, Paraguay and Bolivia. This experience, Pangaonkar believes, will stand them in good stead.
“The learnings from the past and Dakar last year have helped us to put our technological expertise in bikes,” he said. “Our engineers and mechanics have been working on bikes for the past two Dakar rallies too so we will use those learnings.
“Dakar is a gruelling rally for which the rider needs to be prepared mentally and physically. Aravind has been riding for TVS Racing for the past 10 years and we ensured that we train him on the domestic as well as international terrains.”