Defending Finke Desert Race Trophy Truck winner Billy Geddes has made major suspension and tyre changes to his Geisler truck for this year’s race – as a means of supporting his bid to create Finke history.
The Finke is on 7 to 9 June.
Geddes, 37, has also entered a KTM 450 EXC in the bike class, with the ambition of becoming the first person to complete Finke on four wheels and two, in the same race…
“The only way I’m going to do it is by having the best truck run ever,” says Geddes. “It’s got to be fast, clean and keep me in as good a shape as I’ve ever been.”
Geddes has made the decision to fit 39” Toyo Open Country race tyres to his Geisler supported by monster King shocks, the biggest and toughest combination he’s ever fitted.
“Thirty-nine-inch tyres make the holes smaller – and that means I can blast over them,” he says. “The shocks have bigger cylinders, more valving and better control.”
Geddes’ strategy is to blast down the 235km Finke course from Alice Springs in record time – a genuine sub-two hour run. “The Finke isn’t an Enduro any more, it’s an outright sprint,” he says.
When he gets to Finke he climbs out of his race gear, hops in a chopper and flies back up to Alice to don his bike gear and climb onto his KTM, then do the 235km again.
“No idea how long it’s going to take me. My goal is to finish,” Geddes says. But he privately believes a three-hour run on the bike is a reality.
Then next day he does it all again from Finke. Truck first , bike second. By Monday afternoon he should have covered 940 competitive kilometres plus another 700 in the chopper.
Geddes got the idea to do the dual Finke right after surviving the most horrendous barrel roll-over in Australian off-road history. At the 2012 Goondiwindi 400 he paid the price for running heavy shocks on a light fuel load. The truck just unloaded on a series of whoops. Geddes blamed his physical, and therefore mental, fitness.
“I just wasn’t fit enough to think straight,” he says. Eighteen months later he’s probably the fittest competitor in off-road, at least in trucks. He runs 15km at 4mins/km pace and for the last six months he’d been doing specific lower back and quads weight work to build up his personal shock absorber system.
Last year, already fit, Geddes won the Trophy Truck Class at Finke and came fifth outright behind the Pro-buggies. That’s when good mate Toby Price and KTM team manager Ben Grabham, a four-times winner of the Finke on bikes, started talking the dual-Finke. It was Billy’s idea, and they couldn’t talk him out of it.
Four weeks before the 2014 Finke Billy flew into Alice to ride the stock standard KTM down the course for the first time. “I went down and back in the day – it felt good,” he said. Let’s get that right – 470kms in a day, at speed, on a “standard” bike. Then next day he spent five hours with local guru Steven Greenfield to give the KTM the full GTR suspension tune. Now the bike is sitting in Alice, waiting for his record attempt.
“There’s a big difference in technique between the bike and the truck,” Billy says. “In the truck I take the fastest, hardest line – using the suspension and the Toyos to blast through. It’s a flat out sprint. It’s not like some Enduros where you’re in second gear beating the hell out of the truck. Here you’re in fourth gear, flat out, beating the hell out of it.
“The bike needs a different line – smoother and more considered. And it’s your legs and lower back that are taking a lot of the punishment unless you’ve got them well prepared and you’re looking after them.”
But Billy – the buggies and trucks go first….the bikes have to deal with the ruts they make. “Yeah, there’s that to it,” he grins.
Geddes is riding for the full works KTM team, but while Toby Price and newby Ivan Long are on the new fuel-injected 500s, he’ll have the slightly less powerful 450.
“Those blokes are a big chance for outright bike victory,” Billy says. “I’m not eyeing off even the top 50. Winning with the truck is my priority. Finishing on the bike is the second goal.”
Geddes is going to be carrying seven on-board cameras on his two vehicles, a major contribution to a feature film being shot. Called Ride: World Elements, it follows Geddes and Price through their season.
