“A top 5 in Rally2 would be a good result – a win would be great!”

Michael Docherty started racing motorcycles at the tender age of 6 and at 8 won the South Africa National 65cc Championship. Since then he has had considerable success in the discipline racing in the States, Europe and the Middle East. Living in Dubai these last 3 years he inevitably started riding in the desert and in 2021 entered his first rally-raid, the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge, going on to win the Rally2 class. He was back again in 2022 and won the prologue and the first stage before crashing out on day 2. In 2023, with help from SRG Motorsports in Dubai and HT Rally Raid he finally got himself to the Dakar. He started slightly injured and had a big crash on day 3 that left him with a dislocated wrist. Most would have probably called it quits but the tough young South African gritted his teeth and went on to win 4 stages in Rally2, while regularly getting amongst the RallyGP top guns. At the end of the race he’d worked his way up to third overall in the Rally2 class and took the coveted Best Rookie award.

“Despite my injury I was pleased with my Dakar debut and I learnt a lot. Unfortunately due to my injured wrist I wasn’t able to get back on a bike before June which obviously killed any chances of following up my Dakar performance with any strong W2RC results. For this Dakar the goal is to finish in top 5 in Rally2 and the top 10 overall – to win the Rally2 class would be really great. Then I’ll do the first round of the W2RC in Abu Dhabi which is my home race and we’ll take stock of the situation as we can’t keep self-financing for ever… ”