Toby Price wins 2014 WA Desert Racing Tri-Series

KTM’s brand new Desert Racing Team has made its inaugural year of operation a spectacularly successful one, adding the second annual WA Desert Racing Tri-Series to its list of 2014 trophies, that includes the prestigious Finke and Hattah Desert race titles.

Once again, it was that man Toby Price who took the chequered flag on his KTM 500EXC, winning the Indee 500 at Port Hedland to complete a perfect run in his maiden Tri-Series. Price was unstoppable in the tricky conditions, winning Friday’s prologue then going on to take a lead of more than a minute on Saturday, before topping the time-sheets by a similar margin on Sunday. At every stage the man behind him was his teammate, Ivan Long, who took his third successive runner-up finish in what has been a very professional first year on the KTM team.

“It all started well with a win in the Prologue, the first time I’ve done that this series,” said Price. “I didn’t really want to start first but it came out that way. So the first day I pulled a bit of a gap, the run went pretty clean and pretty smooth. The track was rough to start with so that made it tough straight away, and on day two I had about a minute-45 lead, so that meant that Longy would have had to catch and pass me and pull a 45-second lead. Longy pulled in about 40 seconds but I still had the outright lead, and I was happy with that. I was on a good pace, comfortable. So I nailed down a second lap pretty much the same as the first, and started pulling a gap again.”

“I can’t thank the KTM desert racing team enough, the guys worked hard and came away with the good result for both myself and Longy,” continued Price. “I really enjoyed the Tri-Series, it’s a bit of everything rolled into one, high-speed, rough, dusty, awesome countryside out in the middle of nowhere, and without this series I probably would never have come up here in my lifetime. Hopefully they’ve got it all happening again next year, and we’ll be back again next year.”

The win marks KTM’s second consecutive Tri-Series win, after KTM Desert Racing Team Manager, Ben Grabham, won the inaugural series in 2013, and just like Grabbo, Price was able to secure the $20,000 bonus prize for winning all three rounds.

“Obviously it was a pretty much perfect way to finish off the year,” said Grabham. “We’ve had the kind of year where you put in 100% and you get back the results that you aimed for. I’m sure Toby is smiling pretty big – he cleaned up and got 20 grand.”

For detailed results from the event, click here.