In the Baja Aragon, Triumph was victorious in the new Trail category with Ivan Cervantes riding its Tiger 900 Rally Pro.
The official announcement of Triumph’s entry to the race was not made until last Friday, when the race began.
New for 2022 were the Trail and Maxi-Trail categories (Harley-Davidson won the latter with their rider Joan Pedrero aboard a Pan America 1250), as the Baja World Cup looks to take advantage of the growing production adventure markets.
It was Cervantes’ second competitive appearance aboard the Triumph Tiger 900 Rally Pro, but his first rally with it. The Spaniard had taken victory in the Maxi Trail category of the Bassella enduro earlier this year, and despite the new challenge presented by his first rally with the bike, his goal was clear.
“We came to the Baja Aragón with a clear goal, which was to win the new Trail category on the Tiger 900 Rally Pro,” Cervantes said.
But, aside from the category victory, there was the consideration of the overall rally rankings.
Cervantes said: “[O]ur greater ambition was to finish as high as possible in the overall rankings, where people have been amazed at the pace we have taken with the Trail. We are proud to have done a great job, and I believe we have given everyone a lot to talk about.”
The competitive rides Cervantes has made with the Tiger 900 Rally Pro in 2022 are of course in anticipation of the launch of Triumph’s motocross and enduro motorcycles.
Cervantes said that the performance in Aragon “once again proves that Triumph is here in off-road racing - and is here to stay. We chose this race because in the future we plan to come here with the Enduro project, and of course we plan to succeed.”
In the end, compared to the race winning time of Tosha Schareina, Cervantes was missing 33 minutes and 50 seconds. But, Schareina was riding a KTM 450 Rally Replica, which as we at Visordown wrote a few weeks ago is about as close as production rally racers get to a full factory rally machine.
Furthermore, Cervantes and his Triumph were only six minutes off the top 10 in 12th place at the end of over six hours of rallying. That 10th place was taken by Albert Martin Garcia on a Husqvarna FE 450 enduro machine.
