Hero Motosports Team Rally Begins The Oilibya Challenge

India’s first Dakar team, the Hero Motosports Team Rally has started its Oilibya rally challenge, which is taking place in Morocco. The rally commenced on October 1 and will last for seven days, passing through the hot and humid Moroccan desert.

The three days of the rally that have passed comprised of the super special, which took place on day one; Stage 1, on the second day (Monday); and Stage 2, on the third day of the rally (Tuesday). Here’s a little brief of all the three days.

Super Special

On the first day of the rally, Hero’s team had a very strong start. The special round was only seven kilometres long and was aimed at determining the starting order for Stage 1 of the rally. Joaquim Rodrigues was able to finish on twelfth position, while CS Santosh finished 26th in the race. The fastest person to cover the distance was Toby Price from Australian astride his KTM. It took him just 4:56 min to cover the prologue leg of the Super Special.

Content with his finishing position, Joaquim said: "I started a little nervous. I caught one guy in front of me going down the hill. I couldn't pass him because of the dust so I lost a lot of time. After I had passed him the rest was good. Overall I´m pretty happy to be in the Top 15. That´s a good position to be in for tomorrow."

Whereas, Santosh commented: "Today´s prologue was important, I knew I had to get through it without any problems. That´s what I tried to do. I made a small mistake a few hundred metres into the stage. I recovered after that and caught another rider. Today was just a five-minute dash and I can't really complain. We'll see where we can progress when the rally really starts."

Stage 1

Hero’s rally team had a mixed start at the opening stage of the rally, which was around 120km long. Rodrigues, or “J-Rod” as he is called, had a crash at the start. He did recover quickly, but the fall knocked his navigation system out of order. Following that, he had to operate the system manually and hence lost precious time in doing so. However he was able to finish the stage successfully despite the hiccups.

On the other hand, Santosh was quite comfortable on his Speedbrain 450 rally bike. He was able to finish the stretch at a decent pace. He found the first patch of the stage quite difficult, however, he explained that he quickly got used to the situation and beyond that was pretty steady on his pace and the navigation.

Stage 2

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The second stage or the marathon stage was tough as now the riders (and the driver of the participating car) moved towards the dunes, away from the Moroccan sea. Moreover, the stage was now 291km long and the riders had to concentrate on vehicle preservation also as the team service session wasn’t allowed at the end of the day. And the riders were responsible for any sort of repairs to the bikes that might have occurred during the stage with limited resources.

The stage comprised of terrains filled with stones, fine sand dunes and a very complicated navigation. However, both the riders rode in a very composed manner and were able to move up the positions.

J-Rod was able to finish on 14th position and CS took the 24th spot on finish, which clearly indicates that both the riders have moved up the ranking ladder as compared to the day one’s results.

Wolfgang Fischer, Hero’s team manager, said: "Joaquim and CS have completed a hard day´s work. It was a tough test for both the athletes and our machines. We are satisfied with the outcome. ´J-Rod´ has placed himself once again in the Top 15 and keeps making good progress as a rally rookie. CS Santosh gains experience by the hour. Both have moved up in the overall ranks. Now the riders are looking over their bikes. They are well prepared to get along fine in their marathon bivouac without the team staff doing the maintenance work."

The team is competing today in part two of the marathon stage, which is also the second longest special stage of the rally, with 315km of distance to cover.

The Oilibya rally is seen as a preparation call for the Dakar rally and is very important for bike preparation and testing. Watch out for more updates!