Kansas Rally Team to the Sonora Rally 2020

[gagnaou]

This was about this time of the year, a few days before Dakar started in 2015 that my wife taunted me to not only watch those doing it, but living the dream myself. At my level, this did not mean racing the Dakar but participating to a rally myself. So here I was registering for the Cortez Rally, Sonora rally now.

Here are a few pics from the event:







Needless to say, I was hooked!

A few years later, after a few repeats and a few drawback I got the bug into enough people that now we can call ourselves a team



In this thread, I will present how it all came together, the members of the team, the bikes preparation, and hopefully we will be able to keep this thread alive during the Sonora rally with some fresh information from the Bivouac!

[gagnaou]

Let's introduce the Team!

The young fast guys:

Kevin:



Kevin experienced his first official rally last year at Sonora with a great result! He is super fast and super humble, while he can smoke you at anytime, he always has a nice word for you making you think that you are faster than you really are . On top of that he is a great mechanic, so a great combination in the world of rally racing.

Jared:



Jared is definitely the most adventurous of the bunch, nothing like spending a few months exploring Baja on an old XR 400. He has a never give up attitude and amazing engineering skills that got him out of some situations where most people would have called it quit. He has never done on official rally but went on several fun roadbook navigation rides and was our support crew at last year Sonora rally so he has a pretty good sense of what he is getting himself in.


Matt:



Matt has more experience racing extreme enduro type events than rally navigation stuff, but coming to a few navigation rides got him hooked to add rally racing to all of his previous riding experiences. He is a motorcycle mechanic by trade and a very smart rider so that set him up well to have a great go at Sonora.

The not so young guys:

Robert:





Robert is the best friend a motorcycle riding buddy can have! Here he was in 2015 when at the drop of a hat he was in to join me for a crazy idea, some navigation training at Dumont Dunes with none of us having any navigation or desert riding experience!

Luc (me):



I grew up watching the Paris Dakar on TV growing up and love the experience of pushing the adventure ride a little bit further.

The main Guy:

Scott:





With so many guys and having to have our support vehicle following us from bivouac to bivouac, we needed the best of the best! So my good friend Scott, probably the guy who has the most Dakar mechanic experience in the US, very nicely agreed to join us in the Journey!

[xr-nut]

[Savage]

Awesome!

[Creekside]

that is so cool. Good luck, go fast and most important - have allot of fun!

[gagnaou]

Jared and Kevin getting some sand practice, while Matt is preparing his bike!







https://photos.smugmug.com/Motorcyc...g ... 63-640.mp4

https://photos.smugmug.com/Motorcyc...9 ... _n-640.mp4

[ajayhawkfan]

Shocked I am for not being asked to be on the team.

[gagnaou]

Shocked I am for not being asked to be on the team.

Glad you asked! Because of injuries, we have a couple of spot freed up in the team. Though the 1200 GS may not be the weapon of choice

You've got my number

Luc

[gagnaou]

Here is last year's video:

https://youtu.be/oWzV_WfawC8

[troy]

Great video! Luc, do I recognize the guy at 3 minutes and 5 seconds?

[gagnaou]

Kevin doing some prep on his bike adding a 6th gear to his XC





Matt is designing some ways to mount the road book on flexbars



Jared has put together a nice little video explaining a little bit about all the extra equipment necessary to race a rally

https://www.facebook.com/KansasRallyTea ... 679431371/

[troy]

Jared made a great video! It looks like his nav tower is all hung off the handlebars which means all that weight is part of the steering?! When I look at the pro rally bikes, the nav tower does not turn with the bars. Correct?

[gagnaou]

Yes, that is correct, on all on our bikes the roadbook nav gear is somewhat mounted in some way shape on form on the handle bars. On the purposely designed rally bike, they are mounted on the frame so it would keep the steering lighter obviously, but also make the roadbook gear more stable with less shake than when it is handle bar mounted. There are a few system out there that let you mount the gear on the frame by either welding on your steering column or sandwiching the frame around the steering column.

On another note, a few members of the team and out west practicing west of Dodge City, here are a few pictures they just sent me.

[gagnaou]

Preparation are going full force for the team! I am nursing a broken neck so I worry about the logisitic and trying to help raise some funds! Thanks to a bunch of Sponsors we are making some progress but there is still along way to go to clear all the credit cards used to fund this adventure!

If you want some tee shirts to support the team, PM me. They look so cool, for $25 you'll be looking like a STAR as you walk through the Walmart aisles and people will chase you down for an autograph




Something else that we will be doing to raise some money is to put up a couple of Adventure schools sponsored by Cycle Zone in Topeka. If you know a rider new to adventure riding who would like to learn the ropes in a friendly environment, feel free to share the information below with them:



Last but not least we would like to invite you to couple of events PRE and POST rally to share the anticipation of the race and to learn and listen the stories gathered by the team as we return from the event.

[Savage]

[Savage]

Haulin'!

[Savage]

Not Haulin'!

[Savage]

[Savage]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gc0wUO2aajA&t=5s