Grabham wins Indee 500
It’s not like HSE Motorex KTM Off-Road Team racer Ben Grabham has never been in a record book before, but he just made a new entry for himself – as one of the first people on the planet to win a race on the brand new 2014 KTM500EXC.
The venue was the Indee 500, the second round of the brand new WA Desert Tri-Series at Indee Station near Port Hedland, and Grabbo picked up the new bike right before the event.
For the second straight round he went on to dominate proceedings, topping the time sheets in the Friday Prologue, then winning both Saturday and Sunday stages.
Team mate Matt Fish rode a 2013 500EXC to third overall on all three days, to finish the event behind local racer Adam Clay.
The exciting three-round series will conclude early next month with the third round of the series to take place at Kumarina Station, Newman WA on August 9-11.
Grabham will now race back to Perth to prepare for the A4DE, which begins on Wednesday.
BEN GRABHAM – “Pretty much another perfect run for us this weekend. We raced the new 2014 500EXC this weekend and the thing was unreal to be honest. Just like the previous model, I pretty whacked numbers on it and won races. It looks like the motocrosser and they’ve refined a lot of things with the 500 engine and made changes to lighten it up so it now has the nimbleness like the 450. I appreciated that because the conditions were a lot tougher than expected – 35-degree temperatures and two 125-kilometre laps of choppy, unforgiving ground, and with a lot of turns it was just that little bit easier to ride. We won the Prologue by a couple of seconds which was important to give us that dust-free run, then won yesterday by over six minutes which set me up have a nice consistent day today and bring it home with at least a 10-minute lead at the end.
“I had to be careful though. It was the sort of track where as soon as you lost focus you could overshoot something, and there were a few bent bikes and bodies at the end of the race. We’ve got off to the perfect start in the series but I don’t take anything for granted. In high speed racing you switch off for two seconds and you’re off the track, so I’ll be taking nothing for granted next round.”
MATT FISH – “I’m pretty happy with how we went today. It would have been nice to finish would a nice 1-2 but 1-3 will have to do. I was third in the prologue and took it steady yesterday, then tried to push through the dust today but couldn’t quite make the pass for second. I caught him a couple of times but the dust was too bad to get it done. Started 30 seconds behind today and caught up but sat in dust for 250 kays. I had a go a couple times but couldn’t get it done. I was a little worried about the body after the short turnaround but it turned out okay and the bike was fantastic. It was a brutal course, nice and smooth on the first lap but by the last it chopped up really bad, so it was a good test for machine and body. We’ll have a couple of weeks off now and look forward to round three.”
