CS Santosh Trying To Get To Higher Ground With Every Dakar Rally

-      CS Santosh became the first Indian to ever compete in and finish the Dakar Rally in 2015.

-       The 36-year-old from Bengaluru recorded his best ever finish of 35^th overall in 2018.

-       Finished fifth overall in this year’s Pan Africa Rally, which was won by Hero MotoSports Team Rally teammate Joaquim Rodrigues.

-       A sucker for the ‘golden age’ of motorsport from the mid-1980s to mid-1990s.

It’s annoying when people keep asking you the same questions isn’t it? How many times can the answer change and how much could you have changed since you were first asked those questions?

Athletes in particular have a hard time with this, and trust me, even the journalists asking those questions are aware of how banal those queries can seem. However, things change in sports and probably no more than in motorsport where changes to a car or bike or team setup can make all the difference in the world.

Not to mention that the athletes themselves change in terms of their development over time. That is most definitely the case for a cross-country rally rider like Hero MotoSports Team Rally’s CS Santosh who has come a long way since he pretty much forced his way on to the Dakar Rally stage in 2015.

Fast forward to 2019 and he has a Dakar Rally runner-up (yes, second overall in the motorcycle category) as a teammate along with riders who have recorded top ten finishes. The Hero 450RR is definitely a step above the old Speedbrain 450 Rally bike that Hero started to compete with in their first Dakar Rally in 2017.

So, it begs the repetitive and seemingly banal question, what are Santosh’s expectations this year? At Hero’s corporate office last month during the official launch of their Dakar Rally campaign, Santosh answered the question, once he was done snickering after Paulo Goncalves’ attempts to distract him from the interview of course.

The Possibilities

“When you have teammates like Paolo, Joaquim and (Oriol) Mena, you get to see what is possible,” said Santosh. “If I compare myself to where I am in relation to them, I can see that I can grow a lot as a rider.

“It’s pretty special because I have the ability to improve drastically every year and I definitely have in terms of my speed, endurance and navigation. And this is the platform on which to perform.

“It is nice to say that I was in the top ten at Baja Aragon and top five at the Pan Africa Rally, but at the end of the day it’s the Dakar that counts the most.”

Santosh is also encouraged by some of his previous Dakar Rally stage performances where he has even managed to finish in the top 20 at times. However, by his own admission, he has not yet been able to consistently perform over the entire course of the grueling 14-day, 4,500km (that’s just the timed section) motorsport crucible.

A different starting point

One of the reasons Santosh highlights for inconsistencies and mistakes is his endurance, which has improved by his own standards, but there is still work to be done on that front.

“One of the things I have noticed is that I start to get quite fatigued after the first couple of days,” said Santosh. “And one of the reasons for that is that I didn’t grow up riding motorcycles like my teammates and all the other top riders.

“These guys were already world-class riders who were competitive in supercross, motocross and enduro. They were already terrific athletes due to the amount of time they spent on a motorcycle.

“That’s the reason why I need to spend a lot more time training both on a motorcycle and off it in the gym as well to get myself as close to that level as possible.”

Another thing Santosh credits as key to improving his performance has been being allowed to open a stage during roadbook training with his teammates this year. It has forced him to become a lot more confident in his own riding and navigation abilities rather than just trying to keep up.

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All about passion

But perhaps the biggest thing that Santosh learned from an experienced rider like Goncalves is to love what he does.

“Back when I did my first Dakar, Paolo was second,” said Santosh. “And I would have thought he would see himself as some kind of dude but there really wasn’t any of that.

“It was great to see the child in him and the takeaway was that yes, what we do is serious and dangerous and we have big sponsors and factory involvement, but he loves what he does and at the end of the day I am riding motorcycles for a living in spectacular surroundings.

“I have learned to enjoy the process of achieving a good result at the Dakar a lot more. It can’t just be all serious stuff.”

One can even see that passion in Santosh when discussing a subject that really brings out the fan in him; the era of motorsport from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s.

“It really was the best era,” said Santosh shaking his head even as we talked about four-wheel motorsport including Formula 1. “The machines at that time were so raw and had so much power, and no electronics, everything mechanical. It was just something else.”

There was much gushing about the Dakar Rally in that era too. Just like with other global motorsport, sponsorship was plenty, a lot of exposure through television and the vehicles were beasts. Bikes hitting speeds of up to 215kmph on the open desert sections in North Africa, for example.

It truly is humbling to know that you are adding to the history of such an event. Santosh definitely is mindful of it as the start of a new decade and a new chapter of the Dakar Rally inches ever closer.