Cycle News is a weekly magazine that covers all aspects of motorcycling including Supercross, Motocross and MotoGP as well as new motorcycles
Issue link: https://magazine.cyclenews.com/i/113223
INTERVIEW P68 KURT CASELLI the phone and was like, ���oh, shoot, what did I just get myself into?��� It���s kind of been a life-long goal of mine to race and finish Dakar, so it was awesome. This must have been a complete surprise for you. Yeah, a big surprise. I mean, I wasn���t sure what to expect of the race, and to manage the navigation, and everything was new, the bike, I had never ridden the bike before, and so I got here just three days before the race started and got a crash course on the bike and navigating, and it was all thrown together at the last moment, but we had 5000 miles to figure things out. What bike did you ride exactly? It was KTM���s Rally bike. It has a 450 motor, the same motor we use in Baja, the same one I���m using in the hare and hound series; it just has a bigger frame, a bit longer and has nine gallons worth of gas. It has a whole navigation system up front with some fairings, and you have a roadbook GPS, and so it���s a lot heavier, bigger and slower in reacting to everything, so it took me a little bit to get used to that, but that bike is unreal. [KTM] has had it for so long, and there is a reason for that because it works. I know they���re developing a new rally bike that is going to be a lot different, but I was pretty impressed by its stability and the comfort of it. It was Coma���s bike and I rode exactly what it was, it had the same bars, levers, everything, and I didn���t change one thing at all. I wasn���t used to the bike in the first place and I wouldn���t really feel the difference anyway had I made any changes. Did Coma help you prepare for the race or give you any advice? Coma is awesome. It was kind of weird that he took my spot at the Baja 500 - I had a shoulder injury ��� then he had a shoulder injury and I took his spot for Dakar. But he���s a great guy, really humble, totally easy to talk to, and he was so helpful with navigation and more importantly for me. He said, ���just don���t worry about it, you���ll be fine, relax, don���t get discouraged if you get lost, don���t get frustrated, just go have fun.��� I tried to remember that as the day went on. Coming from a guy like him who has won this race five times and is just one of the best navigators, one of the best riders that we���ve seen in rally and off-road, and for him to tell me all that, it felt good. It gave me some relief. He only stayed the first two days, then he headed back home, he was doing therapy pretty intense with his shoulder and couldn���t stay the whole time. Despite the short notice, did you actually feel prepared for the race? I was as prepared as I could have been in two weeks. Physically, yeah I was fine and in good shape, but like mentally, I had no idea what to expect, and so, really, I just packed my bags and that was it, so in the short time I had, Caselli only had a few weeks to prepare for a race that most people take years getting ready for.