Coming up in a few days is the Sealine Qatar Rally to begin on April 21. So let's start it off with the best news for one of our inmates and tireless rally supporter, Tony Schattat and his winning of Speedbrain's contest to join the team in Qatar for the rally. The entry list is comparatively short, even compared to Abu Dhabi with the noted absence of HRC. Once again, Chavo will be flying the Jolly colors on a +450 class CRE500 going for the class win. The addition of Chaleco as a full factory rider will be interesting to watch as well will the addition of Quinn Cody back into the Speedbrain roster.
A very short list? Obviously Qatar have the budget, but on a postage stamp of a peninsula they will be covering all parts. What will interesting though is that most aspects will have been ridden and driven, so there will be lots of tracks, so a potential test for navigation The only thing though is that the rains from last week may have levelled the playing field somewhat
I couldn't believe it either. Funny thing was I had forgotten I had bet on their 2nd place, all along I thought it was 1st. During the DC I was bugging the speedbrain guys saying if it weren't for those darn 32s I would maybe see them again in Qatar. A few days later I get the awesome message from them I was actually expecting to stay home to catch up on a tonne of work, but I've never won a competition before so I can't really miss this KTM will be running their brand new EFI bike there, I will obviously take pics for you. Sam told me that going to Qatar would depend on his result in DC, not sure if they are pissed at his penalty losing his 1st place?
Great news on the win and we will see you there as I am entered. Aim is not to get lost and I think there will be hundreds of tracks to choose from and a small navigation mistake will lead into a far larger one really quickly.
Then Speedbrain would have been 3rd Can't imagine that HRC are too pissed with Sam - he takes a bike that has had "problems" is now obsolete and wins the super special, two stages and leads from the front from the start to the finish only to receive a totally out of proportion off course penalty - I imagine they are rather excited about the future
Tony, is it a "tourist" seat you won or a bike to race with? Either way, what a cool thing Looking forward to the new orange bike photos
congrats and godd luck Tony. I have one more rallyist to cheer for now. Santosh CS, my fellow country man probably the first to enter the scene of international rallying from India
There wan't another guy from India on the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge a few weeks ago? Chunchung....something :)
If it is the Santosh guy from ADDC then I think his bike caught fire one day and was totally destroyed. It was a nice looking RMZ 450 with Honda Europe rear tank adapted to it but it's now a pile of melted aluminium and plastic.
Like the Abu Dhabi thread, I'll sticky this for the week and we'll use this to report stage times and progress as we have a few inmates participating.
No Joan Barreda this week. Out to recover from hand surgery to repair a torn ligament in his right hand. He got it operated on this week by the official surgeon to MotoGP.
