Yesterday, Yamaha said they signed Cyril Despres for next year’s Dakar rally. With that out of the way, Honda announced their own lineup.
Honda’s 2014 team (barring injuries) will consist of Helder Rodrigues, Sam Sunderland, Javier Pizzolito, Paulo Goncalves and Joan Barreda. If you follow Dakar at all, you should recognize some of those names – these are the guys who have been nipping at KTM’s heels the last few years, winning a stage here and there, but unable to unseat Team Orange.
But could that change in 2014? If Yamaha can’t take the crown from KTM, maybe Honda can. They’ve introduced a new bike for the rally as well, and you can bet their engineers learned a lot from the last race – they don’t do things halfway at Honda. We’re betting on very interesting racing next January.
