#123 🇿🇦Charan Moore – Original by Motul

“I’VE GIVEN MYSELF 3 YEARS TO GET A FACTORY RIDE”

Your average “Original by Motul” entrant, especially a rookie participant, has pretty limited ambitions. For most a finish without too much drama is a very good outcome. But then most first time malle moto entrants aren’t of the calibre of Charan Moore. Coming from a motorcycle racing family -his dad ran race teams- Charan grew up at the track and started racing at 16. Twelve years of hard graft later it all came together when last year he signed for KTM South Africa and won the country’s prestigious National Cross Country Championship. With the likes of Yamaha factory rider and friend Ross Branch making such an impact in rally-raid it was only natural that Charan’s attentions turned towards the Dakar and a promising debut on the Kalahari Rally, where he was leading by an hour before blowing his engine up on the last day, proved that he could not only ride fast but navigate too. His ambition now is to try and take the “Original by Motul” class win and achieve a reasonable place overall before being assisted the following year with the hope of earning a factory ride.

“For me the essence of the Dakar is the unassisted Malle Moto class so that’s where I’d like to make my debut. Plus for this event I’m self-funding so there is also a small question of finance… I think I should be able to post a good result and from there I’d like to move to one of the good level privateer teams the following year. With solid assistance behind me I can try and make an impact on the overall rankings and get noticed by the factory teams. That might sound ambitious but the race series I won here in South Africa is not dissimilar to rally-raid and I’ve been doing a lot of road book training. There’s four or five of us including Ross (Branch) and we’re all pulling together to bring each other along. We each make road books for the others to try and riding together has been a big plus to my preparation.”