September 1st, 2005

Press Release

In exactly 4 months, the epic Dakar Rally will start again. For 2006, the competitors will start in Lisbon, Portugal, struggle through the challenges of the most inhospitable deserts, mountains and trails in the world, and, with luck and perseverance will finish 16 days later in Dakar, Senegal.

For the first time ever, a privateer motorcycle team is building rally bikes from the ground up in the United States. Rally Pan Am’s riders are Pedro de Uriarte, Charlie Rauseo, and Mike Krynock. Pedro finished amongst the top riders in his first Dakar Rally in 2005. Charlie is the team’s manager and the most experienced American rally racer entered. Mike is a veteran of international competition and completed the rally last year as a mechanic.

The team will ride KTM 525 EXC motorcycles carefully modified to withstand the torture that is the Dakar. The bikes will carry 8 gallons of fuel and 5 liters of water, navigation equipment, specialized suspension and engines, and many other changes made necessary by the unique tests of this event.

The team is backed by PAi (Plan Administrators, Inc.), a Wisconsin-based financial services company, Top Oil, Hapag Lloyd, Scuderia West, Baja Designs, Motion Pro, Enduro Engineering, Renazco Racing, Transfer Flow, Ready Racing, CytoSport and more. They will cooperate with Rally Raid UK as they have in past years. However, this year the team is specially preparing a Ford F-350 assistance truck for the Dakar with a FIA-mandated roll cage, navigation equipment, and complete mobile repair shop in the truck’s bed.

In late September, 2005, the team and several other privateer Dakar competitors will run a mini-Rally, the "Death Valley Rally" in the deserts of Southern California and Nevada. The media is invited to view the action, the riders, and the machines at that event and any time before everything is shipped to Lisbon on November 1, 2005.