Husqvarna Monster Energy - Mexican Rally Raid Championship Report

This past weekend, the Mexican Rally Raid Championship started its second year of existence with a great participation of motorcycles, atv's, utv's and race cars. This rally had a total distance of 300km from Teziutlán to the Santiago Texmelucan Hacienda in the state of Puebla, 270km north east of Mexico City. In this occasion, last year's champion and official Husqvarna rider supported by Monster Energy, José Luis Pérez, defended his crown and finished in the highest place of the podium.

The race started on Saturday with a 150km stage and a special test of 100km. The terrain that riders were faced to was a mix of loose and dusty ground, a descent of rocks and a long sandy river. On Sunday, they rode a much shorter route of only 150km, including a 70Km special test around the great Santiago Texmelucan Hacienda, which gave incredible views of Mexico's ancient buildings.

Pérez ended the first day of the championship with a time of 1:09:00, 2 minutes in front of Eric Gallardo, an ex-Rally Dakar rider. The third place was for Philippe Ollivier with a total time of 1:15:10.

Jose Luis Perez: “The biggest challenge of this race was the navigation, the stages were very technical and with many twists in short distances. On Saturday, I got lost for a long time, like 20 or 30 minutes, but the other top riders had the same issue.
I was very lucky when Gallardo couldn't find the check points, because I was lost too and both of us lost a lot of time. After that, I tried to avoid mistakes on Sunday and to be as fast as possible and I got the win. Now, I go home very happy with the results. I really liked the rally, I learned a lot and it gave me a great platform of preparation for longer international rallies.”

The next round of the championship will be the “Bajio 500” race in the historical town of San Miguel de Allende on July 2-4.

- Husqvarna Racing News