Life isn’t always about doing what everyone else does! So how about a motorcycle rally in a sidecar? Super excited to have chatted with Eglė Gerulaitytė from ADV Pulse about the mayhem of racing on three wheels in the O Nosso Dakar rally with my husband. One mighty adventure!

Extract from ADVPulse – Vanessa Ruck, a British rider and rally racer who took on the Portuguese adventure Dakar piloting a Ural Gear Up sidecar with her husband

A well-known rally race aimed at adventure bike riders, saw its 9^th edition this year. The rally took 315 riders across rugged Portuguese terrain covering over 400 kilometers in the Algarve area in two days. What was unusual about O Nosso Dakar this year were two sidecar teams racing alongside two-wheelers.

Tracks at the Rally consist mainly of gravel roads, single track, hill climbs, ruts, washed out water channels, and just about everything in between. It’s no walk in the park for motorcycle riders, and for a sidecar, it’s a serious challenge.

Although the organizers provided several detours around the steepest climbs for the sidecar racers, Vanessa and Alex chose to stick to the rally route – and made it.

Racing a Sidecar

O Nosso Dakar rally mostly sees riders aboard bikes like the BMW R1200GS, Honda Africa Twin, and Yamaha Tenere 700. When Vanessa got the invitation to race in a sidecar, however, she didn’t hesitate.

“Back in November, I spent three days with Ural Experiences Portugal learning to ride a sidecar for the first time. On the final afternoon of the trip, my best friend Emma and I came up with an idea: why not do a rally in a sidecar? The seed was planted, and it grew from there,” Vanessa shares.

According to her, a sidecar motorcycle handles very differently from a two wheeler. Sidecars have different reactions, unique controls, and a whole extra wheel to think about. It also weighs nearly half a ton and completely transforms the riding experience. “Three wheels may sound easy, but an adventure motorcycle sidecar really is its own beast,” Vanessa explains.

When Ural Portugal invited Vanessa to race the O Nosso Dakar, there was little time for preparations. She and her husband rode a Ural Gear Up sidecar with upgraded suspension, but there were no rally-specific mods on the bike.

Vanessa did one crash-course day of training just before the rally, and she shares it was a steep learning curve. “I had to seriously up my game, learning to use the front brake to turn to the left, sliding the 500+kg loaded unit across the terrain with the throttle on to pull away in a new direction. Get it wrong and it will spit you out,” she explains.

In addition to her own training, her husband Alex needed to adjust to the co-pilot position quickly, too. A co-pilot in a sidecar helps the rider by flinging their weight to counter the physics of centrifugal forces as well as navigating.

“It’s a shared experience and team work. If either one of us misses a beat, we’re both taking the consequences with half a ton of mass beneath us,” Vanessa says.

“I entered the rally as a complete sidecar novice and finished it with confidence. Sometimes, calculated risks, stepping outside your comfort zone, and trying new things is the best way to progress and learn. I certainly progressed my riding more in two days of the rally than I would have in a week trail riding. So if you’re tempted to try a rally, then I’d say get up and give it a go!”

Currently, Vanessa is planning her 2022 racing season – and a race in a sidecar may be on the cards again, too.

For the rest of the Adv Pulse article see here.

If you’re new to my page – it’s more than just dirt bike riding, Harleys and racing, I’m on a mission to prove that nothing is impossible if you want it bad enough. See more about my story plus read about my life changing accident, which started it all.

You can find me Vanessa, The Girl On A Bike over on Instagram, Facebook and YouTube, and www.thegirlonabike.com.