Husqvarna Off-Road team rider Broc Grabham has made a switch to the Husqvarna FE 501 a successful one, pushing to his best ever result in the Hattah Desert Race last Sunday.
The Bathurst rider, who rides an FE 450 in AORC competition, got away smoothly from his tenth-place starting position and used the extra torque of the FE 501 to progress to eighth by the half way point.
As the track chopped dramatically, however, Grabham‰Ûªs left hand began to blister badly, and he had to grit his teeth to get through the final two hours to the finish.
With his hand looking more and more tattered and the track offering increasingly fewer opportunities for respite, the Bathurst rider was forced to dig deep in the final quarter of the event when his senior team mate Lachy Stanford appeared on the radar after a difficult race.
Grabham held out for eighth overall and fourth in class.
‰ÛÏIt wasn‰Ûªt too bad here, I prologued tenth, so I was in a decent position early ‰ÛÒ I think I was sixth," Grabham explained.
"We had to fuel the first two laps because we weren‰Ûªt too sure of our range, and lucky I did because I used quite a lot on the first lap. From there I kept charging away ‰ÛÒ I think I was ninth ‰ÛÒ battling with a couple of boys. Then about half way my left hand started falling to pieces with blisters. The skin was all rolled up from the middle of my palm up to my fingers. It made it really hard to hang on in the second half of the race. A lot of the time I was coming into corners one-handed doing 120 and just letting go and hoping for the best!
"With two to go I saw Lachy was trying to catch me and I thought ‰Û÷Oh well, I‰Ûªve got to try and pin it‰Ûª and stay where I am. Everything worked perfectly for me, my body felt great, the bike handled perfect and the crew did everything we needed to. Just my hand let me down a bit. So I‰Ûªll have to come back next year and do it again!‰Û
