Defending Finke Desert Race Trophy Truck winner Bill Geddes has entered a Trophy Truck and a motorcycle in this year's Finke Desert Race, and will use them consecutively in the two classes.
Geddes will run his 800hp Toyo-sponsored Geisler Trophy Truck to defend his 2013 title and then will climb aboard a works KTM 450EXC to run the course again.
The Finke Desert Race, Australia's premier off-road event, is on June 7-9 and runs from Alice Springs to the tiny community of Finke and back.
Geddes, 37, has made major suspension and tyre changes to his Geisler truck for this year's race to support his bid to create Finke history.
"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-inch Toyo Open Country race tyres to his truck 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.
At Finke he will helicopter back to Alice Springs to ride his KTM over the 235km again.
The next day he will restart in Finke: truck first followed by the bike. By race end he will have covered 940 competitive kilometres plus another 700 in the air.
"My goal is to win the truck class and finish on the bike," Geddes says.
"I've no idea how long the bike leg is going to take, but three hours each way seems possible."
Geddes got the idea to do the dual Finke right after surviving the most horrendous crash in Australian off-road history, during the Goondiwindi 400 in 2012.
Geddes blamed his lack of physical, and mental, fitness.
"I just wasn't fit enough to think straight," he says.
He embarked on a two-year fitness program which has brought him to the dual Finke.
"It will be important to rely on my equipment to cushion me over the terrain," he says.
"The 39-inch Toyo tyres I'm using are the key to a faster and more comfortable ride than the 37-inch tyres I've used in the past.
"They should set me up to be race-fit to ride the bike."
