Insight: Ricky Brabec

Summer months, down time, and riding motos all part of his recent day-to-day existence, the time is now approaching for Brabec and the entire Honda HRC FIM World Rally-Raid Championship effort to get back to work. Brabec talked about just what is coming next.

“We have durability testing coming up in two weeks. After durability testing, we have the Vegas to Reno race held by Best In The Desert. After that comes more durability and more testing, and then from that we basically have September open and free and then we go to Africa at the end of September for the Rallye Du Maroc and the final round of the World Rally-Raid Championship.”

“The R&D is definitely important,” Brabec continued. “I mean, as it is in any motorsport or production lineup. It is really important for the racers to be at one with the machine. The R&D has been really awesome. The Japanese listen and we can make big improvements just with a few good words, or bad words. Whatever works. Yeah, the production is awesome, and I really like being a part of it because I feel like I can really make the motorcycle my motorcycle with being involved.”

In sorting out and developing the Honda HRC CRF450 Rally machine for the 7,000-to 8,000-kilomoter World Rally-Raid odysseys Brabec competes and wins in, the HRC Honda Racing organization Brabec is part of is, to him, is absolutely confidence inspiring.

“Honda is great,” Brabec declared. “You know the Japanese do a really good job. They’re really, really concerted and they really like the input we give them, and they obviously want the best for their machine, as well as the racers wanting the best for themselves with the machine. The Japanese make everything possible, and I really appreciate that. It’s really fun, and like I said, I really enjoy being a part of the R&D side.”

“With the durability side of testing, we go to Glamis, we got to Barstow, we go to Dumont Dunes,” Brabec continued, addressing just what goes into the testing and research and development aspects of the HRC program. “We kind of travel around to find different terrains and different elevations and different conditions and whatnot. What goes into it is a little bit of everything, you know? We have engine technicians, we have wiring technicians, we have chassis technicians, we have basically a technician for every piece of the motorcycle there for basically a whole month. We’re making small changes here and there, we’re giving the right direction, the wrong direction, so that we they can figure out what to improve and what not to improve. Being part of it is really cool because being pretty smooth with the words and really focusing on what you want to change, or what you feel with the bike, can help them make their job way easier and also help the bike improve."

Is a lot of what ultimately goes into the HRC CRF450 Rally the end result of Brabec putting his thumbprint on the machine?

“I wouldn’t say a lot of it is me,” he answered. “I mean our whole team is there. I would say I am the most picky rider with how the chassis and the suspension are, but you know every rider has his own style and after two Dakar wins I think the Japanese really enjoy and listen to me. As far as my thumbprint, I would say yes and no. There are bits and pieces of it I’ve been involved with, but overall, the Japanese know beforehand what works and what’s not going to work. They deliver a really good motorcycle pretty much off the floor, and then we make small adjustments.”

Throughout the conversation Brabec spoke to the great unknown of the World Rally-Raid Championship. When racing into nothingness at mind-boggling rates of speed for 12 hours a day, there are oftentimes rocks, ditches, holes, dry rivers, dunes, square-edge bumps, and high-speed drop-offs to be acknowledged and dealt with.

“Oh yeah, we don’t know what’s coming up at us,” Brabec explained of being a world class Rally-Raid competitor. “They give us a roadbook and say, ‘Okay, well here is the roadbook. Hopefully everything is all good and everything is all right, and everything is marked.’ This all comes with experience of racing in the desert. Reading terrain at a far distance and going fast doing it while reading a roadbook can be a challenge. I’ve been doing it for ten years now with the rally stuff. You can never learn too much. I’m still learning and still practicing. Yeah, we’ve won the Dakar Rally twice, but that doesn’t make you the best navigator out there or the fastest person out there. There are always areas where you can improve. That’s what we work on year-round. Just growing up in District 37 and reading terrain is I guess is where I have gotten a lot of the experience from. You know with a lot of the areas around the world that have deserts, those deserts look like the desert that we have here. It’s all familiar and it looks, more or less, the same. One desert might be more green and one desert might be less rocky, but the desert is the desert and it is the desert for a reason. Like I said, we don’t really know where we are going out there. We’re just following our roadbook, and our roadbook has our mileage on it and has the direction on it and has the dangers on it. We get the roadbook 20 minutes before we start and that’s barely enough time to put the roadbook in your bike. After that it is staying focused and staying mentally in the game is of really big importance for this race. Before we get there, you can do some investigation, like the lay of the land and stuff like that, but we don’t technically know where we’re going until we’ve already been there.”

Brabec continued on to speak about what actually goes through his mind when he’s in top gear and careening across treacherous terrain for hours on end.

“Oh, we’re thinking about a lot when we are out there, but to stay focused, if you’re winning the race or have a chance to win, you’re focus is definitely razor sharp,” he said. “If you have a big off day and you don’t have a chance to win and it is just survival at that point, you end up thinking about things at home and thinking about your girlfriend and thinking about your dogs and thinking about your family and friends and what’s going on at home. You’ve got to snap out of it really quick because you’re going to lose track of the roadbook and lose track of where you’re at and the next thing you know you’re going to have a snowball effect day which will cause you to make too many mistakes. In rally you don’t want to make too many mistakes.”