Image: Nils Friedrich.

KTM’s brand new Desert Racing Team has made its inaugural year of operation a spectacularly successful one, adding the second annual Desert Tri-Series to its list of 2014 trophies that includes the prestigious Finke and Hattah Desert race titles.

Once again it was that man Toby Price who took the chequered flag on his KTM 500 EXC, winning the Indee 500 at Port Hedland to complete a perfect run in his maiden Tri-Series and scoring the $20,000 clean-sweep bonus.

Price was unstoppable in the tricky conditions, winning Friday’s prologue then going on to take a lead of more than a minute on Saturday, before topping the timesheets by a similar margin on Sunday.

“It all started well with a win in the Prologue, the first time I’ve done that this series,” Price commented. “I didn’t really want to start first but it came out that way. So the first day I pulled a bit of a gap, the run went pretty clean and pretty smooth.

“The track was rough to start with so that made it tough straight away and on day two I had about a minute 45 lead, so that meant that Longy would have had to catch and pass me and pull a 45-second lead. Longy pulled in about 40 seconds but I still had the Outright lead and I was happy with that.

“I was on a good pace, comfortable, so I nailed down a second lap pretty much the same as the first and started pulling a gap again. I can’t thank the KTM Desert Racing Team enough; the guys worked hard and came away with the good result for both myself and Longy.

“I really enjoyed the Tri-Series, it’s a bit of everything rolled into one, high-speed, rough, dusty, awesome countryside out in the middle of nowhere, and without this series I probably would never have come up here in my lifetime. Hopefully they’ve got it all happening again next year, and we’ll be back again next year.”

At every stage the man behind him was teammate Ivan Long, who took his third successive runner-up finish in what has been a very professional first year on the KTM team.

The win marks KTM’s second consecutive Tri-Series win after KTM Desert racing team manager Ben Grabham won the inaugural series in 2013 and, just like Grabbo, Price was able to secure the $20,000 bonus prize for winning all three rounds.

2014 Desert Tri-Series
Round three – Indee 500

Overall results:
1 Toby Price
2 Ivan Long
3 Todd Smith
4 Daymon Stokie
5 Adam Clay

Championship standings:
1. Toby Price
2. Ivan Long
3. Todd Smith
4. Jacob Smith
5. Rod Faggotter