On The Pegs February 2019 - Volume 4 - Issue 2 | Page 48

On The Pegs
P 48
On The Pegs
Vol. 4 Issue 2 - February 2019
P 49
I
n just his second year of rally racing Andrew
Short secured a hard-earned fifth place finish
in the jewel of all Rally racing: the Dakar Rally.
It takes more than speed to place fifth – or even
finish – a rally like Dakar, so Andrew Short clearly
has a well-rounded set of skills that he devel-
oped racing motocross and supercross up until
his retirement from those series in 2016. We got
a chance to speak with the friendly racer shortly
after his Dakar finish. And we mean shortly after -
Andrew actually gave us this interview between
his post-finish shower and his appointment at the
Dakar podium celebration.
What was the difference for you this year
from last year?
Experience. That’s the biggest thing. One year
I really got to learn to prepare. It’s not a race you
can just show up to. I think I had the speed. I defi-
nitely couldn’t read the high speed terrain like the
good guys, but just the experience and knowing
how to race and navigate, when to push and when
to chill out, because I crashed a lot last year. Even
this year on day two and three I crashed three
times. At that point, I almost hurt myself really, re-
ally bad. I knew I just needed to chill out. Also just
being around a good team and being able to train
with those guys. That makes a big difference as
well. I’m really stoked with how this year went.
Reading the terrain, was that the big learning
curve for you?
The biggest learning curve is just navigating.
Rally racing, there’s so much strategy. It’s not one-
dimensional like typical racing where it’s just all
about speed. With rally, you have to have speed.