Honda Racing Corporation’s Rally Team has recently set up headquarters in the Montesa-Honda installations in Santa Perpetua de la Mogoda, in Barcelona.
The Montesa-Honda facilities in Santa Perpetua de la Mogoda, Barcelona, home of the MotoGP and Trial teams, will have a new neighbour from April: the racing department of the Team HRC Rally.
Team HRC Rally’s operating base is being moved to new offices in Barcelona, which will allow the team to take advantage of the synergies of the Honda establishment. This will bring logistic and climatic benefits and will also see the team move closer to the Honda family, to most riders’ home bases and nearer to training and testing areas.
At Montesa-Honda, Team HRC Rally will have at their disposal offices, a workshop and a warehouse that cover a surface area of over 250 m2. The team, which has been received by Montesa-Honda chairman, Koji Sakamoto, will shortly begin preparing the bikes for the forthcoming scheduled events.
ROBERTO BOASSO, NEW TEAM MANAGER OF TEAM HRC RALLY
Team HRC would also like to announce the incorporation into its ranks of a new Team Manager: Italian Roberto Boasso, who will make up the management personnel alongside Martino Bianchi, General Manager and Taichi Honda, Project Manager.
Roberto Boasso, 43, an Italian hailing from Bra, Cuneo, has a wealth of experience in the world of Cross-Country Rallies, with no less than seventeen Dakars under his belt. He has participated with various teams in differing roles that range from Head Mechanic to Team Manager. In over 60 rallies, he has been with KTM, Bordone-Ferrari, Aprilia and Husqvarna has worked with riders of the calibre of Carlo de Gavardo, Chaleco López, Toby Price and Pablo Quintanilla. He has previously worked alongside Joan Barreda when the two competed in the Dakar with Aprilia.
The first race for Team HRC 2016-2017 will be Merzouga Rally, to be held in Morocco from 21st to 27th of May. The team will announce shortly which riders will participate in this, the first of the Dakar Series.
Private: Martino Bianchi
It’s a really important moment for Team HRC with so many changes underway. Firstly, there’s the operational base that will be relocated to Honda Spain. That’s where the logistic base of Team HRC, MotoGP and the World Championship Trial Team is already based. So, we will be a single family under one roof for the three disciplines in which Team HRC officially participates in at an international level. This is because Spain offers logistics that are better dedicated to the needs of the team, such as operating in rally, training and we will be able to be closer to the riders who, for the most part, come from the Iberian peninsular of Portugal and Spain. There is ideal terrain and tracks for training and let’s not forget Morocco that’s fairly close too. The second recent development is the incorporation of the new Team Manager Roberto Boasso, who has a tremendous experience of seventeen Dakar Rallies. For Team HRC it’s really important to be able to have a Team Manager of such experience collaborating with us and this could help to benefit the team and help us to reach the goals that we have our sights on.
Private: Roberto Boasso
I’m very pleased to form a part of this team, this great squad, which for me has always been a dream as Team HRC is synonymous with excellence and I’m really proud of it. It will be an enormous challenge with a lot of work to do – to develop the bike and the team. Putting all these components together will certainly not be an easy task and it will be a huge challenge to lead the team and the riders towards our goal of the Dakar. I’m very happy to be here in Spain in the new headquarters with all the support that Honda is giving us. I’d particularly like to thank Honda for having given me this opportunity to be in the team and support the official riders. The debut race will be the Merzouga Rally with all the official team riders and we will try and do our best to get a result for the team.
