Five riders will spearhead the Honda Racing Corporation’s Dakar campaign in 2014. Image: Honda Racing Corporation.

The Honda Racing Corporation (HRC) has revealed the five-rider lineup which will ride the new Honda CRF450 RALLY at the gruelling Dakar rally in January, 2014.

The team of Helder Rodrigues (Portugal) Sam Sunderland (United Kingdom), Javier Pizzolito (Argentina), Joan Barreda (Spain), and Paulo Goncalves (Portugal) was introduced at the Mugello circuit in conjunction with this week’s MotoGP event.

Team HRC will have its first hit-out next month to ‘warm up’ for the Dakar, which begins on 5 January, 2014 in Argentina. The race takes close to a fortnight to complete and concludes in Chile some 8000 kilometres later.

Rodrigues and Pizzolito open the team’s campaign on the new machine at the Desafio Ruta 40 in Argentina next month, while Barreda and Goncalves will have to wait until September for their first outing – the iconic Pharaoh’s Rally.

UK-based Sunderland, fresh from a third-place finish in the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge, will continue a testing program with other riders as well as taking part in the Morocco Rally and the Merzouga Rally.

The team has set itself the lofty goal of victory and hopes to use the success to spearhead sales of the bike in its production phase.

HRC’s Katsumi Yamazaki will serve as team director alongside Martino Bianchi. Approximately 30 staff will make up the factory outfit.