What a crazy weekend and what a crazy couple of months our Toby Price Motorsport Team had preparing the truck for our Iron Man Double attempt at the 2018 Finke Desert Race. I’m also stoked with six wins for KTM and it feels amazing that we’ve got the record for all-time bike wins.
Events like these grab you and there’s something about them that keeps you coming back. There’s not much I enjoy more than being tapped out in top gear in the Outback for an hour or so. I first experienced this on a minibike growing up on a huge property in western NSW. I started on a little 50cc as a four-year-old and all I wanted to do was ride flat out. The difference now is that it’s at 160km/h. Back then on the 50 it was probably doing 15km/h!
I’m not going to lie, I was pretty nervous lining up after 24 months since I last raced in the bike category at Finke. We managed to get the top qualifying spot after prologuing first on the KTM 500 EXC-F and we had a pretty damn good run down. Clean, fast and I hit my marks. This gave me a bit of a lead coming into the next day’s leg, but I knew this race can throw anything at you. Walshy (David Walsh) had put on a massive charge to get up to second during the first leg. He passed 26 people on his way to Finke which is unheard of in those conditions, so I definitely had no time to rest.
After finishing the Prologue fourth in the Red Bull Trophy Truck I was happy to arrive at Finke in second place with navigator Jason Duncan and I having had a couple of close calls. Then there was an eventful evening replacing the transmission removed from my good friend Billy Geddes’ truck and flown from Alice Springs to Finke at 10.30pm. I can’t thank the crew enough for the work they put in..
Unfortunately we didn’t make it back to Alice in the truck. We had a power-steering failure which was a hard pill to swallow after the team’s long hours of work. I knew if I had any hope of winning on the bike I was going to have to forfeit wrestling the truck the rest of the way home. After pulling off on the service road, David Ellis and the Northstar Pastoral helicopter flew me back to Finke for the final bike leg.
The run home went really well despite a little off I had at the 100km mark. I got back up to speed pretty quickly, although the KTM was a bit twisted. But over the whooped-out straights it sorted itself out by the time I got to my final fuel stop. Crossing the finish line in front of the Alice Springs crowd for the win was awesome, you can’t beat that feeling.
I feel very fortunate to be part of KTM and the support that brings. Being this far from the factory isn’t always easy but the relationship I have with Jeff (Jeff Leisk – KTM Australia General Manager), Glenn (Glenn Kearney – Motorsport Manager) and the KTM team in Australia is amazing. It’s like stepping back into a family when Finke time rolls around again.
The Finke is very different to the Dakar and other desert rallies I compete in overseas. While speed is important in the Dakar, navigational skills are vital. Unlike Finke, it’s not the fastest who wins the Dakar, it’s the smartest. Map reading is 80 per cent of a winning ride in the Dakar. The 14 stages cover 9000km over two weeks, so you are also always balancing the risk with the reward. For example, I can lose 20 seconds walking the KTM through a water crossing or 20 minutes drowning it and trying to get it going again.
What the Finke and Dakar have in common is the enthusiasm of the spectators. At the engagements I had at Peter Kittles, Desert Edge and the Finke Street Party the fans came out to say hello and to grab a poster. I give a huge thank you to everyone who stopped into my pop-up store – I appreciate your support!
We always have a great time burning gas and hauling ass from Alice Springs to Finke and back!
