Sherco-TVS gear up for the Dakar Rally

With Aravind KP back at the helm, TVS Racing seems pretty excited for the next edition of the Dakar Rally. So much so that they even let us ride their race-winning motocross machinery.

The road to Dakar is not easy. And once you’ve made it there, it only gets all the more difficult. Don’t believe me? Ask our man, Aravind KP, that. After representing TVS Racing for nearly a decade in dirt racing, rallies and motocross events, Aravind got his first shot at Dakar in 2017 when Sherco TVS Factory team put him on-board for what’s the most gruelling rally-raid in the world. It wasn’t a fluke or luck playing in his favour. With 15 national championships under his belt back then (now it stands at 16), Aravind was the obvious choice to represent TVS and India at Dakar. 

An Indian manufacturer fielding an Indian rider – call it a dream start for KP, if you will. However, things didn’t go to plan on Aravind’s first outing at Dakar. That’s because he broke one too many bones after two back-to-back crashes and retired unceremoniously on the fourth day of the rally-raid. It was far from a debut that he or TVS had imagined. But it was a debut, nonetheless. And however bad it was, Aravind had made it to Dakar against all the odds. 

In just over a month’s time, the 40th Edition of the Dakar Rally will kick-off. Everything remains unchanged – the rally will be as perilous as ever, covering over 9,000 kilometres through Peru, Bolivia and Argentina in a span of 15 days. The Sherco TVS’ riders are still the same – Joan Pedrero, Adrien Metge and our very own Aravind KP. What has changed, as KP tells us, is his approach this year. He thinks he’s much better prepared for his second outing – both mentally and physically. You see, he’s not a Dakar rookie anymore. 

While Aravind is all pumped for the 2018 Dakar, his team is even more confident of him as well as his other two teammates performing well next year. Sherco TVS aims at finishing in the top 10 at 2018 Dakar. A tall order, indeed, but then, it’s not impossible, especially when you look at their riders’ performance this year. At the PanAfrica rally, Pedrero was victorious while Metge was second. Aravind KP was in top 15 as well as he crossed the finish line in 12th. At Merzouga, Pedrero was again in the top five while Aravind was 27th. Adrien finished quite low in 53rd position, but that was because of a technical glitch. All told, the Sherco TVS team looks well prepared for the next edition of Dakar than ever before. 

The riders sure play a vital role, but so does the machine. And piloting a monster like the Sherco TVS RTR 450 (check out its specification in the box above) – while also going through a road-book for navigation – is not an easy task. Actually, as you’ll read in the next two pages, riding on the dirt isn’t for everyone, let one participating in a rally raid. 

Catching Air

First gear. Approaching a blind crest. I whack the throttle open. I make it to the other side, albeit a bit dramatically. I must have been airborne for probably a second or two, but it felt like as if I had just been launched into the orbit and was now falling into a black hole. I could already count the number of bones I was going to break upon landing. I knew I’d overcooked this one badly and there was no way I was going to go back home in one piece. Saying I was scared stiff at that moment would be a gross understatement.
 
After what seemed like a decade, or maybe two, in the air, I finally landed back on mother earth. Hands firmly on the handlebar and heart in my mouth. Bang! And there was no drama. What the heck? Why haven’t I crashed? From what I can tell, the front wheel was dug deep into the dirt and the fork was fully compressed to its maximum 300mm travel. But why didn’t it rebound at the same rate? In fact, why’s there no rebound at all? How can this thing just land flat without dislocating my shoulder or throwing me off the saddle? I’d love to give full credit to my skills for that, but then I’d be fooling myself. You see, I wasn’t riding just any other motorcycle on this occasion – it was the multiple supercross/motocross championship winning RTR 450 FX after all. 

The reason I was able to scare myself silly with the aforementioned and quite mad dirtbike is that TVS organized a Riding Workshop for a few of us lucky auto journos at the company’s motocross track at Anekel, near Bangalore. And because TVS knew that most of us were a bit too excited for this experience, they also had all of the three Sherco TVS riders to stop us from going all out. 

On my first outing, I took the RTR 450 FX while Aravind led our pack and showed the track to us. At first, I thought I should have had gone for the softer and more friendly RTR 200, however, within a lap, I knew the RTR 450 was the right tool for the job. The engine has so much grunt everywhere on the rev-range that as soon as you twist the throttle it darts ahead like a rabid cat. It only weighs 120 kilos and uses a perimeter frame, meaning you feel no weight between your legs. And what really, really makes it a hoot to ride is its WP Suspension (same as the Dakar-spec bike) and those knobby tires. You open the throttle, feel the rear wheel stepping out and then feed some more power and get it back straight on. If you’re an average rider like me – I am not being modest, really – I bet you’ll be sweating bullets riding a motorcycle in that manner. But, with the RTR 450 it just felt so under control. 
 
After doing three laps with RTR 450, I jumped on the RTR 200. There was less power, the tyres weren’t meant for hardcore off-roading and the front-end was too light for my liking. In fact, in one of the laps, I crashed as well. However, once I got the hang of the bike, it felt more nimble and easy to manoeuvre. It’s a great learning tool, to be honest. I mean, I’d have loved to fool around the track on the RTR 450 all day long, but as Aravind pointed out to me and most of the other riders, riding on a loose surface is a different ball game altogether and it requires a different technique for steering, braking and body-positioning. And in that regard, we all lagged far behind. I don’t know where others stand, but I need a LOT of practice to look half as comfortable or good while riding a dirt-bike. Period.  

That said, the idea behind making us lot ride these bikes wasn’t to make us better off-road riders. Instead, it was done to give us an idea of the level at which these riders are racing. And I, for one, have come back convinced that they belong to some other breed. I mean, if a two-second jump can scare me to death, I can only imagine how it’d feel to do that over and over again for 9,000 kilometres. Let’s just leave this to professionals, I say…