Team HRC Honda’s Joan Barreda has arrived in South America, and he is feeling good about his chances to win the 2015 Dakar Rally.
The 31-year-old Spaniard is planning shake things up at the front of the bike race just as he did last year, only this time he hopes to avoid the bad luck that plagued him last year. Barreda proved that he is as fast as any rally rider today when he put his HRC Honda CRF450 Rally factory machine in the lead for the first four days of the 2014 Dakar. His hopes for the win were ultimately dashed when he ran into fuel issues during Stage Five. Barreda battled back to win the final stage, his five stage wins were the most of any motorcycle rider in the event.
“Last year the goal was to win, but Stage Five, which was difficult enough, cost me a lot of time following the fuel problems,” Barreda said. “I then decided to attack because that is my philosophy and because I had to put the pressure on the race leader. And yet I crashed on the penultimate stage when I was comfortably in second place. During the rest of the year we did a tremendous amount of work on the bike. It is renovated and rebuilt, even if its looks the same. We decided to make more pragmatic adjustments in order to rely less on a certain sophistication. It is also lighter, thanks to a change in weight distribution. It is also smaller, and we have changed the navigation post. I was also able to do a lot of testing in Tunisia, Morocco but also in the United States. We are ready. Our ambition is total because we are really competitive.”
Barreda’s dream of being a Dakar Rally champion has been the same since he swapped motocross racing for rally raid riding a decade ago. The 2015 edition will mark his fifth attempt at the Dakar, and he faces a stiff challenge by a Red Bull KTM Factory Team that has been a dominant force in the rally. The previous 13 editions of the Dakar have been won by a KTM rider and the last nine editions of the race have been won by either Cyril Despres or Marc Coma. With Despres now pursuing a rally raid car career, defending Dakar Champion Coma is clearly the man to beat in 2015. Barreda is confident that he now has the Dakar experience to challenge his countryman.
“Experience is important at the Dakar, and nobody in this generation of riders has won the race before their fifth year,” Barreda said. “This will be my fifth Dakar, so if everything goes according to plan, I hope I can win. It will be a long race, so the most important thing is not to make mistakes with navigation, and this becomes especially tough when racing at high altitude. The most challenging riding we do is at high altitude in really low temperatures, and this has been a focus of my training.”
With a strong team behind him, Barreda intends to take the fight to his rivals in the 2015 Dakar Rally, and he plans to be the man atop the podium at the end of the two-week, 9000-kilometer event.
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