On Sunday the CFMOTO Racing Team presented its plans for the next season and showed fans the new ATVs, which will stand at the start line for the first time very soon. Although the team managed to finish in high positions last year, this year athletes have set even more ambitious goals for themselves - the racers say that their goal is to have more than 30 race days in the top tier competitions during the 2022 season.
The upcoming start for the racers is very soon - on March 12. Adomas Gančierius and Antanas Kanopkinas will stand at the start line of the Fenix Rally in the Sahara Desert. This rally takes place in Tunisia, which is called the gateway to the Sahara and many as seven days of racing in the desert awaits athletes. During race days they will have to cover more than 2,100 kilometers, and as many as 1,280 of which will be special stages. This is the second time for both men in this rally - last year A. Gančierius finished second and A. Kanopkinas fourth among ATVs.
"I am very happy that I’ve managed to recover from the accident in Rally Albania last year, and we are both in a very agile mood for the first start of this year. We already know Tunisia, so we hope not to make the stupid mistakes that still occur,” said Adomas Gančierius about the upcoming start.
Athletes have said that finishing in the Sahara will be a good indicator for further and bigger plans, as there are a lot of extremely strong athletes gathering there and it is a very good place to test their speed and abilities. After the Fenix rally, the team will have some time to prepare for the Andalucia rally, which will take place in June and is one of the stages of the world rally-raid championship. It will be followed by the start in the Rallye Breslau in Poland, and at the end of August the athletes will say goodbyes to the summer during the Dinaric Rally in Dinaric Alps. The sports season will be crowned by the Balcan Offroad Rallye in Romania.
Challenges with ATVs
“After last year’s pandemic, we really knew it would be a lot harder to prepare the ATVs: sending parts as well as painting or making any improvements now takes much longer. Even today, a week before the start, we don’t have shock absorbers yet. It is possible that the team's media crew will bring them to Tunisia by plane, so we will have to install them on the spot and go to the start without testing at all - the test will be the first special stage," A. Kanopkinas told about the challenges.
Both riders of the team will race with CFMOTO CFORCE 1000 quads this year, which differs from the standard models not only by special upgrades for the race, but also by certain factory-shipped components that have not yet been tested under high stress conditions.
"The factory has a new prototype engine, some parts of which we received in January and other ones just a week ago. These are new engine components that let’s produce a higher degree of compression and thus generate more power. It is true that we do not know anything about the reliability of this design - so far, these new components have only been adjusted and tested in a lab,” A. Kanopkinas spoke about the situation, saying that since the team is supported by a factory it has a task of helping with R&D. And the racing conditions, where the equipment is subjected to extreme loads, is probably the best place to try out new products.
The team's nearest start is on March 12 at the Fenix Rally in the Sahara. The team members invites everyone to support them and watch the progress of the race - it is no secret that there will be many more competitive crews at the start line in Tunisia, so it should be very interesting to watch.