What I have learned about riding a purpose-built race machine and how it compares to a built-up rally bike.
RFR is short for Rally Factory Replica on a KTM, or FR, Factory Rally, on a Husqvarna. In short, this is the closest you will ever get to the bike that the factory racers ride.
While I have always known that the RFR is a purpose-built race machine, experiencing the absolute thrill of it between your legs is something that cannot be explained as much as it should be experienced.
It also creates what I like to call the “first-class conundrum”. A friend of mine once told me, “Never fly first class” (not that it was ever an option for me), “because once you do, you can never go back to economy!”
Riding an RFR is kind of like that. You feel like you can never go back to riding a “built-up” rally bike.
The RFR is a thoroughbred, purpose-built rally machine. It wants to be ridden aggressively, hard, and fast.
Its suspension is built to absorb pretty much anything a rally can throw at you, and they are unbelievably stable (until they are not).
It took me a while to understand and comprehend just how hard/aggressive you should ride the bike in order to get the most out of it. You can not ride it like an enduro or off-road bike.
Here are some of my takeaways:
The thing can’t turn!
It's a “long” bike and if you ride it for the first time it feels like it won't turn (coming off a dirt bike).
After my first ride, I texted a friend of mine and 2023 Dakar Malle Moto winner, Charan Moore:
“Any advice on how to turn this thing in tight corners will be much appreciated 😂”
“With the rear wheel, back brake to get it to slide and throttle to steer 😉😂”
In the beginning, I was riding in too high of a gear
The RFR is geared very long. In the dunes, I often found myself in second gear or third gear.
I was blown away by how hard you can push the engine in a gear and how much it pulls in that gear. There was literally nothing I could do not get up. If a dune was too steep/high I simply geared down and revved it even harder. For me riding in a “lower” gear took some getting used to since on dirt bikes we always try to ride in a higher gear in the sand.
I was advised by the team that you should NEVER pull away in second gear on an RFR in the sand, like you would with a dirtbike. Always pull away in first gear!
For the high-speed stuff, I never went super fast but the times I did touch 120, it was always in 5th (and there was more go, even though the bike was revving super high)
It's clear to me that 6th gear is reserved for the pros and for liaisons.
The wobble
Many RFR owners can attest to this. I witnessed several crashes during several rallies because of this. Luckily (maybe because I was not going that fast), I have only experienced it mildly.
The story goes that the bike will be running seemingly smoothly at high speed and then from nowhere it will just throw you off.
The running theory as I understand it is that given the massive 33L fuel capacity of the bike, if the fuel is not distributed equally throughout the 3 tanks, sometimes if you hit say a bunch of square edges or you go over undulations that are relative the same/smooth, the fuel in the tanks starts “sloshing” around, slowly at first but building up momentum as you ride over the terrain, eventually reaching some sort of velocity that results in upsetting the balance of the bike and throwing you off.
Pro insider knowledge from Clayton Enslin (Enslin Racing, and Head Tech for SRG Motorsports) mentions that some pro’s run special foam blocks in their tanks to diminish the chances of this happening.
Sand in exhaust
Until the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge I never even knew this was a thing, but evidently it is. I know of at least 3 bikes that had this issue in the race, 2 of which were seized.
It happens like this:
If you fall over or crash on the downhill side of a dune and the bike lies down on the exhaust side, the soft desert sand runs into the exhaust like water.
This also can happen easily when you are pulling the bike around/down the dune in order to pick it up again.
If enough sand enters the exhaust, when you try to crank the engine it won’t turn over or it will pull the sand into the motor from the exhaust side (not sure how this works) seizing the bike.
Picking up
Picking a bike up at the best of times can be challenging.
Picking it up when you are exhausted, hot and the bike is filled to the brim with fuel, can sap your energy, frustrate you, demoralize you, and even cost you a rally.
Personally, the first thing I do is to take a step back, breathe, and look at the situation. This becomes very challenging when there are race cars and trucks behind you, and you know one of them can come over the crest of the dune and crash into you. There is also the ERTF / Sentinel alarm that keeps beeping as soon as your bike is sideways, so staying calm and taking a step back is not always easy, but worth it.
There are certain scenarios and angles that you will just not be able to pick the bike up. The aim is to expend as little as possible energy and to get the bike into a position where it is easy to pick up.
More often than not, at least for me, it is easiest to pull the front end of the bike around so it lies sideways/parallel to the down side of the dune. Taking care that no sand runs into the exhaust.
I then get on the “top” side of the bike, you can not pick the bike up if you are below it, use my legs instead of my back, and lift the bike. For me, this is the easiest way (there might be easier ways, which I would love to learn). The bike is now facing downhill at an angle, so you can easily get back up and ride it down the dune.
Not a matter of if you get stuck, but when you get stuck!
On a sand stage at some point, your back wheel will dig into the sand, maybe as you crest a dune with soft sand on the top or maybe just in a soft patch of sand.
When this happens the natural instinct is to pick the bike up out of the hole the rear wheel has dug. Due to the weight of the bike, or the amount of sand that is in the hole, this might not be easy or possible.
Rally master and Rally Comp inventor, Mike Johnson advised me to drop the bike on its side and force the handlebars into the sand. This creates a kind of lever effect lifting/forcing the back wheel out of the hole and letting the sand fill the hole. When you then pick the bike back up, the back wheel should be on top of the sand and not in the sand. Take care not to get stuck again in the same hole 😂…… it happens.
Fuel caps
While this did not happen to me because the team duly warned us about this, the fuel caps, in particular the rear, have a propensity for coming loose while riding, so it is absolutely vital that you tighten the fuel caps personally and as much as you can when refueling.
Riding an RFR is nothing like riding a built-up rally bike. It will also change you forever.
Would I like to own an RFR? Heck yes!
If I could only have one bike, would it be an RFR? I am not sure, probably not.
Will a built-up rally bike ever be as good as an RFR? Never.
Many people commented at the ADDC “Why would you attempt this race with a built-up bike if there is a purpose-built machine for it.” To their point, as far as I am aware, every “built” bike in the race developed some problem.
This does not mean a built bike won’t finish, I think most if not all of them did finish ADDC, but your risk profile of not finishing, and your “struggle factor “ goes through the roof.
The main reason people use built-up bikes is because of the economic/cost factor. It is extremely expensive to buy or rent an RFR.
Many people own dirt bikes already and then attempt to build them into rally bikes. That is exactly what I did for my own personal bike (see article here). There is nothing wrong with that, and a great way to get into the sport.
The question of cost-benefit comes in when you are doing major rallies, where you spend a lot of time and money on prep, training, traveling, etc. The question of the cost and price of renting or buying an RFR, should be weighed up against the cost of not finishing the rally due to a mechanical problem. (This does not mean that RFR’s don’t have mechanicals)
As mentioned this machine is a purpose-built race machine and thus, has to be ridden and treated as such.
Personally, I feel that this bike was built specifically for sand/dune rallies and the Dakar, and that is what it should be used for. For pretty much anything else, a built-up rally bike I feel is more than sufficient.
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