Wheels Australia — August 2016

28 WheelsMag.com.au

JUST finishing the brutal 452km

Finke Desert Race, whether you’re

competing in a tough off-road

truck or, even less sanely, on

a motorbike, is an impressive

achievement. To do both, on

the same weekend, is

beyond staggering.

Yet that’s exactly what

Australia’s first Dakar champ Toby

Price did at this year’s Finke Desert

Race, held on June 11-13, in which

competitors blasted 226km from

Alice Springs to Finke one day, then

blasted back the next.

For this country boy from

Singleton, NSW, who started

winning motorbike races at age

four, merely completing the so-

called ‘Iron Man Challenge’ wasn’t

freakish enough. Despite it being

his first serious off-road race in a

truck (he’s won the bike event four

times), he damn near won both the

bike and truck categories.

He won this year’s two-wheeled

title and finished an improbable

second in the trucks, only eight

minutes behind the winner, despite

having rolled his 6.0-litre V8 Geiser

Brothers machine three times in

practice, then run off the track

twice in qualifying, so he’d had to

start from 18th.

On the first day (Alice Springs

to Finke) Price overtook 13 rivals,

quite often by nudging them from

behind – “just a love tap”, as he

put it – because he didn’t realise

this was illegal. At the end of that

first body-battering stage he ran

straight to a plane and flew back

to the startline to do it all again

on his bike. Then he repeated the

process the following day.

But the last word should go to

one of his many awe-struck fans at

Finke: “He’s got problems, that kid;

I think he needs to see a doctor.”

STEPHEN CORBY

Twice the Price

Dakar champ completes the Finke Iron Man

Dirty little secret

Looking like a surfer who had

just spent a relaxing afternoon at

the beach rather than two days

eating dust, Toby Price, 28, told us

his secret had been barrel-rolling

his truck in practice.

“I lost count of how many times

it rolled, so I was pretty pumped

to get out of it and feel alright.

Not even a broken fingernail. I

wish I could fall off my bike and

feel like that,” he laughed.

“After that I realised how safe

I was in the thing, that I wasn’t

going to get hurt, and I thought

I might as well have a real crack.”

AUGUST 2016

R

ed

l

i

n

e Sleeping on the job

Ever had a car seat so comfortable you could fall

asleep? Engineers from Citroen – the company

that famously developed hydropneumatic

suspension for the DS to produce a magic carpet

ride over even the most rugged roads – have

been working on new seats that utilise the

technology in modern mattresses. Prototype

seats using memory foam-style technology are

currently being used in a Citroen C4 Cactus

test car the French manufacturer calls the

Advanced Comfort Lab. Wonder if it comes

with a duvet for naps?