At the team headquarters in Stephanskirchen
(Bavaria) everyone has been working overtime since many months to build five
race bikes capable of winning the Dakar 2012 - with the brand new Husqvarna
TE 449 RR by Speedbrain as the new challenger.
The team will have 5 riders: the French David
Frétigné, the Portuguese Paulo Goncalves, the Spanish Joan Barreda and the
two Brazilian Zé Helio and Ike Klaumann.
The new Rallye bike developed by Speedbrain
is a very specialized bike, with many tricky solutions developed and
designed in countless hours of testing and engineering. It takes advantage
of various elements out of the Husqvarna TE 449 and also the BMW G 450 X,
and apart from the strong TE 449, it´s especially lightweight and easy to
handle both in fast and technical conditions.
After introducing their new developments in
Rallye technology, Speedbrain got financial, partly technological and
material support from Husqvarna. The 11-men crew, plus the 5 riders, is an
experienced combination of individuals mixed of eight different
nationalities, which have mostly been on board at the past Dakar already.
Team principal Wolfgang Fischer: "We are very
happy that we could convince Husqvarna to partner with us for our Rallye
bike developments and we are proud to continue to be a partner of the BMW
Group and Husqvarna. I want to thank especially my staff, who believed
strongly in the project, working very hard on countless days, long evenings
and weekends, to make our vision happen. I want to thank also our sponsors
and technical partners for their great and fast support in many ways. I am
sure we can prove in the 2012 Dakar the big potential of the team, the bike
and the great riders we´ll have at the start in Argentina on 1st January
2012. Of ourse, our common goal is to stand on the podium at the finish line
in Lima, ideally at the top of it..."
