Hero Motocorp, the Indian motorcycle giant, had announced its motorsport intentions with the launch of the Hero Motocorp Team Rally in May, earlier this year. The rally team now, has formally announced their participation in the famous Dakar Rally in 2017 with riders CS Santosh and Joaquim Rodrigues as their pilots.
Hero team, with its strategic partner Speedbrain GMBH, performed well at the Afriquia Merzouga rally with Portuguese racer Joaquim Rodriguez finishing 9th and Indian ace CS Santosh finishing 16th overall. With the riders as well as the team positive about their developments, Hero Motocorp Team Rally is preparing for one of the toughest motorcycle rallies across the world - the Dakar 2017.
At the event held in Jaipur, Dr Markus Braunsperger said that Hero is working towards elevating their product development capabilities to global standard and the racing experience will help them benchmark and test their products and concepts at international level. The motorsport learnings will trickle down to production motorcycles. While it would be too early to speculate the launch of more off-road motorcycles (read Impulse 250), we can expect the components to be more reliable and durable to start with.
From what we understand, with motorsport, Hero has started building a brand for itself that would appeal to a younger audience. After the split from Honda and the contract to use their technology and platforms ending in 2017, Hero is expected to come up with a new line of products that has been in the pipeline for a long time now. With the new motorsport-fuelled global and younger image, Hero will look to expand their international base as well especially in Latin America and African markets.
