Yoshio Ikemachi to run first Dakar Rally on bike since 2000 in 2024

It has been more than a decade since Yoshio Ikemachi he retired from professional racing, almost fifteen years after his most recent Dakar Rally, and even longer since his last bike Dakar. The last two will change in 2024 when he will make his return on a KTM 450 Rally Replica for BAS World KTM Racing Teamcompete in the Rally2 category.

Ikemachi first appeared at the Dakar Rally in 1996, also driving the car for the race’s press corps. He made his real racing debut a year later, where he finished sixteenth overall on a Honda bike. After two years of competing in enduro and other rallies, he returned to Dakar in 2000 and improved to tenth, the highest finish for a Japanese rider at the time and the best among privateers. However, this was his last start on two wheels as he joined Nissan’s factory program to race a car in 2003.

He finished twenty-second overall in his first Dakar with Nissan in 2004, which he repeated two years later en route to a runner-up finish in the T2 category. Ikemachi eventually raced for Mitsubishi and Subaru; his last Dakar in 2010, with Subaru Argentina, ended in retirement after his driveshaft broke on the third stage. While he scaled back his racing over the next decade and took an office job in car sales, he continued to participate in races such as the Cross-Country Rally of Asiawinning the bicycle category three times in 2012, 2015 and 2018.

Other outings during his career, which began when he was seventeen, included a fourth in the 1994 Australian Safari, seventh in class in 1995. Low 1000 and fifth in its variation Baja 2000, and victories like the 2006 Beijing to Ulaanbaatar Rally.

Although he is fifty years old, he found the urge to return to international rallies and joined TM Racing, an Italian team that competes in the FIM Enduro World Championship team. In February, Ikemachi entered the World rally-raid championship‘s Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge with BAS World, ends twelfth in Rally2 and the second among the drivers of the Veteran’s Trophy with a best stage performance of the tenth in Stage #1.

“When you’re 50, your body starts to weaken suddenly. I think if I’m going to do it, it has to be now, and it has to be on a bike.” Ikemachi told Off1.jp. “It was around the time that the pandemic of COVID-19 started, and I thought that it could also be a positive message for the world. I found meaning in returning to Dakar once more. The passage of my long-time mechanic time Yukishige could also be a catalyst.

“Once you have decided, it is a do or die situation. It creates a situation where there is no other option but to go. I changed my job to a freelance position where I have more freedom, and I have been active for l ‘recent years. The severe depreciation of the yen sometimes leads to a sudden shortage of funds, but I guess I will manage somehow. [laughs].”

The Dakar Rally 2024, which begins on January 5. it will be the eighth Dakar of Ikemachi. It is one of ten knights runs for BAS World.