The Sardinia Rally, round four of the FIM Cross-Country Rallies World Championship, will get going on the island just off of Italy this weekend.
Team HRC’s Paulo Goncalves of Portugal will be the lone soldier for Honda’s factory rally team when the Sardinia Rally kicks off this weekend on the island just off the coast of Italy.
Goncalves is currently feeling strong after having recently won the Desafío Ruta 40 Rally in Argentina. The Ruta 40 is not part of the FIM Cross-Country Rallies World Championship, but Team HRC said that the rally was still an important test and a great warm-up for Sardinia, round four of the World rally points race. It helped the team gain solid testing tie in true Dakar-style terrain as a prelude to the 2016 Dakar Rally.
Goncalves finished third in the Sealine Qatar Rally, the previous World Championship round, and he is currently ninth in the series point standings. A win could vault him several places in the title race.
The Sardinia Rally has a reputation for being a demanding event on the World Championship calendar, and it presents an unusual challenged in that the riders compete aboard machinery that is more akin to those used in the FIM Enduro World Championship than to the rally-specific machines used in the FIM Cross-Country Rallies World Championshp and also in the Dakar Rally. The lightweight enduro machines are better suited for Sardinia’s narrow, zigzagging island routes.
According to Team HRC General Manager Martino Bianchi, the Sardinia Rally may require the use of different equipmnt, but the usual skills still apply, namely good navigation and riding talent on the island’s difficult tracks.
“We will race in Sardinia with Paulo Goncalves who after the great performance in the Desafio Ruta 40, will be once again fighting for the world title in a race that he likes and where we would like to get good results,” Bianchi said. “On this occasion, we will race with the CRF 450 enduro version, tuned like a rally bike that matches perfectly the characteristics of the twisting Sardinian tracks.”
The Sardinia Rally gets underway Saturday, May 6, starting from the Hotel Is Molas in Pula, a town in the south of the island before the racers face their first real test on the Capoterra motocross circuit that afternoon. The actual first stage will begin on Sunday on a winding route that finishes in the tourist haven of San Teodoro. Stage three will be a marathon stage in which the competitors must camp out in a tent. The event will include on Thursday, May 11.
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