The F5 Bivouac (rallye raid news) and W2RC - World cross country rally championship

I'm just seeing Botturi liste at the Italian Baja with a Yamaha
http://www.italianbaja.com/ing/index.asp

Also Zanotti and moreover Peterhansel and Andrea Mayer listed too

what an interesting day, I hope CdP stays on two wheels

I was hoping this was not the case.

Didn't Barreda just bail from the SpeedBrain team?

This today from Red Bull

http://www.redbull.com/en/motorspor...2/cyril-despres-leaves-ktm-after-5-dakar-wins

Interesting that it doesn't say if Cyril will keep them as sponsors or not (most probably not is my impression).

Neither does it actually confirm that he's off to Honda (So from that I take it red Bull doesn't know, confirming they are no longer sponsoring him)

Doyle

I agree, very strange...

Maybe it means "negotiations with Honda and Cyril are still to be concluded?"

On the Speedbrain situation, they may still have access to the 450 Husky/Bmw motor for a while yet.

I learnt this Sunday that when BMW commissioned the 450 motor (built by Kymco in Taiwan), they ordered 2500 units.

Needless to say there's still a lot of them left in Kymco's warehouse!

CCM here in the UK have just taken a number off their hands for their new 450 adventure and this is how I got the news.

Sitting on the start line of the Brechfa Rally in Wales this weekend, I got chatting to a fellow competitor who it turned out is doing the PR work for CCM for the new bike (his day job) and he explained about the surplus after we got talking about CCM's (my race bike).

Thanks for bumping me over here Flood. Didn't see this thread when I got the Despres news early this am. So who will Despres dominate Dakar for now? Lol.
My money is on Honda. Despres/Red Bull may have outgrown KTM. From a marketing standpoint, Despres/Honda/Red Bull is a commercial monster. If Honda decided they wanted him they have resources to could make him an offer he couldn't refuse, financially and race support.

Or...he dropped several hints over the past year about eventually moving to four wheels...

Here's one from left field.

The word Kawasaki was bandied about before with regard to Cyril, but what if it was linked with Speedbrain?

Speedbrain, powered by Monster and Kawasaki. Just like the AMA MX bikes......

Green monster bikes. Energy drink wars really take off......

On some of the French press , they seem to favor a run on four wheels if he is to stay with Red Bull .It seems that He is going to test a buggy with Al Attiyah ?

More like "the certification ensures that the company is capable of digging out some stuff that looks a bit like documentation on the one morning a year the auditor turns up".

Or ISO 9000 can mean....

Our product is shite but it is at least consistently shite to the same bad standard every time and the shittyness is properly documented

Hey Dash, we missed you on Sunday!

Cyril, KTM, and Red Bull all confirm Cyril and Red Bull are remaining together. Red Bull only partners with athletes/companies with greatest odds of winning, whatever the sport. I wonder if that's the best evidence of a switch to four wheels? KTM is easily the best bet to keep winning Dakar. Whether you feel they're the best bikes, best racing program, the whole thing is skewed in their favour, whatever. It is unlikely that Red Bull would team with anyone other than KTM. They spend buckets of money in the other Dakar classes. Cyril is close with Peterhansel, etc, lots of options to mentor him as a driver. I think I'm putting my money on four wheels.

I really hope he's not going to Honda. I want roddy and pizzo to be the guys that start and finish bringing Honda up to the top again

Yeah, gutted not to be there, but there's bigger fish to fry this year (and the bike's still not back together).