Keeping it in the family
معلومات عن الطاقم
- Craig and Carl Searle’s Dakar obsession started when their dad started bringing home Havoc Crash videos. In among the tarmac chaos was footage of Dakar crashes and the two young brothers were instantly taken by the machines and the desert scenery.
- Eventually when Craig was 10 and Carl 13 they managed to persuade their dad to buy them a Honda CR80 which they took turns riding.
- When enough pocket money was accumulated for them to each be able to buy bikes and they started racing moto-x together.
- Craig went straight from school into the family business that provides water storage solutions for water sprinkler system for things like supermarkets and factories.
- Wages allowed the brothers to race at championship level but then marriage and mortgages put their competitive ambitions on hold.
- When they returned to bike racing the brothers decided to switch to enduro and began instructing at BMW’s off-road school in Wales. Prolonged contact with the boss, 10 times Dakar participant Simon Pavey, and fellow instructor Neil Hawker only fuelled the two brothers Dakar ambitions and it was just a matter of time before their Dakar entries went in.
- Not the whole family is obsessed with off-road competition. They have a have a third brother who has no interest in two wheels whatsoever and plays music in a band.
طموح
“We actually first looked at entering the Dakar way back in 2015. We opened the laptop to see how much it would cost and quickly closed it again! However, talking to Si (Pavey) and Neil (Hawker) made us realize that with a lot of dedication and a bit of organization we wouldn’t have to put our hands too deep into our own pockets. To qualify we entered the 2023 Rallye du Maroc and being family orientated got our dad to do our assistance, rather than rent space in one of the professional privateer teams. That worked out well and we both finished but ASO told us that we needed more experience – and in retrospect they were absolutely right. So, following on from that we entered the Qatar Baja in 2024 and the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge in 2025. I think those three events combined have shown us most of the different types of terrain we should encounter next January and we’re as ready as we’ll ever be. For assistance we’ll be using our dad again, plus a family friend and a fellow instructor at the off-road school, who is also a professional mechanic. As far as our ambitions are concerned our overriding goal is to finish. To that end we’ll try and ride together as much as possible. We did that in Abu Dhabi and it worked out pretty well. Carl had a crash there and hurt his ribs and I was able to help him through. Everybody asks us who is the fastest. I’d say I’m a better navigator while Carl is a tad quicker. Though we still laugh about the time when he needed to finish 8th or better to qualify for a moto-x series and I beat him in to 9th place! I like to think that these days where more focused on a common goal!”
