- Hero will field two riders
- Sherco TVS will have four riders
- CS Santosh to be the only Indian in the rally
Hero MotoSports Team Rally and Sherco TVS Factory Rally Team have announced their respective teams for the 2018 Merzouga Rally. While the former will field two riders, including CS Santosh, Sherco TVS will have a four-rider contingent at the desert rally.
This year, Hero has fielded CS Santosh and Oriol Mena. Both these riders were also a part of Hero’s Merzouga campaign in the last year, where they had finished in the 17th and 12th position respectively. Sherco TVS contingent on the other hand, consists of two Spanish riders - Joan Pedrero and Lorenzo Santilino, one Argentinian - Martin Duplessis and Vanni Cominotto from Italy. In their first appearance at the Merzouga rally, Sherco TVS scored the 4th and 11th place with Pedrero and Adrien Metge, while the Indian riders Aravind KP and Wahid Abdul Tanveer had finished 21st and 27th. This year, the team is once again aiming to be among the top five finishers.
The Merzouga Rally is a five-stage rally that takes place annually in Morocco, which takes riders through the Atlas mountains and the dunes of the Sahara desert. The Merzouga Rally is a part of the Dakar Challenge Series, which means that the winner gets free ticket for the next year’s Dakar rally. The Merzouga rally will be flagged off on 15 April and will go on till 20 April.
