KNIGHTER TO SWITCH TO FOUR WHEELS FOR DAKAR RALLY DEBUT.
Manxman David Knight MBE, is a professional motorcycle enduro racer who has competed as a factory rider for most of the top motorcycle manufacturers in the world, including BMW, Honda, Yamaha, Kawasaki, Sherco and KTM. Now thirty four years old he has won four World Championships, three American titles and ten British Championships. Along the way he has won most of the major enduro events around the world. His infectious character and clean image has won him an army of fans. Full information on www.knighter.net. Moving to four wheels is an important step in his career where he follows the current leading Dakar Rally competitors, all moved from bikes to cars. These include Stephan Peterhansel who has won eight times including on a bike and in car; others include Alfie Cox (Nissan), Nani Roma (BMW) and Cyril Depres (Peugeot).
Beady Race is currently putting together a package so that he will race a car in the 2017 & 2018 Dakar Rallies in South America. Additionally as part of his training programme he will spend time in the dunes in Morocco and compete in a ‘Baja’ event in Spain and a desert rally in Egypt. Throughout the two year package he will be involved in various promotional events.
The Dakar Rally is the largest single sporting event in the world; all the statistical figures for this event can be found on www.dakar.com, go to ‘figures’. They include, typically, more than 600 competitors, 53 nationalities, 3,500,000 spectators and 1,200 hours of broadcasting in 190 countries.
This massive coverage still leaves space for documentary filming of specialised subjects.
Beady Race, currently part of RallyRaid UK will form a separate team for this venture. Formed in 1995 Beady Race had modest success prior to merging with RallyRaid UK in order to produce a state of the art desert racing car, the Desert Warrior. RallyRaid UK are Britain’s largest desert rally support organisation. . See www.rallyraid.co.uk. During the eighteen years that they have been involved with the Dakar Rally they have taken more than four hundred riders, drivers and mechanics to that event. They also manufacture the Desert Warrior car and have supported their owners at desert rally events around the world. This support has included teams from South Africa, Australia, Canada, Bolivia, Mongolia and the United States. Their role will be to manufacture the cars, all support and organisation for the team will be with Beady Race. Collectively the main people who will be involved with this venture have more than one hundred years of racing experience. Currently the website www.beady.com is being upgraded to reflect this venture where timing is very important but will shortly provide more information. It does show an image of the latest Desert Warrior car.
The Desert Warrior is a space frame design that is not based on a road going car. It is powered by a BMW three litre engine and uses the best available transmission, suspension and electronic components. The design has been made to reflect the teams multi million pound sponsorship deal.
The venture is at the initial planning stage and will be based in Cheshire. The time schedule provides an opportunity for an interesting film which can show the story from conception, car construction, training, early events and one of the Dakar Rallies. There are several facets to the story including the car development but not least David’s move to four wheels which is an important career move for him. As usual he is confident; one of the challenges for Beady Race is to control his enthusiasm. A six thousand kilometre course in the desert can be unforgiving.
Can you suggest a production company that would be interested?
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