With 20 entries, six podiums (including a victory in 1997), David Hauquier knows the sands of Le Touquet like the back of his hand.
If you add in his Northern French origins, then he’s the perfect man to continue leading the way in L‘Enduropale du Touquet even after he’s hung up his race helmet.
He’s been the event’s sporting director since 2010 and as such one of his main roles has been to design the track for the world’s largest motorcycle event.
David, tell us about your role?
Since my victory in 1997, I’ve made a few changes in the circuit because we’re not allowed to go into the dunes anymore. The trail was a large oval between Le Touquet and Merlimont and we wanted to improve it partly for safety reasoons but also to make it more technically demanding and more fun to drive. I’ve drawn on my experience and my track record to design up the new track.
What does L’Enduropale mean to you?
Well with 1000 riders taking part, it's the biggest motorbike event in the world. You do’t find a field like that anywhere else. As as rider, I always enjoyed putting myself to the test in this race and I take a certain pride in Le Touquet as a northerner. It’s great to play a leading role in an international event and even though I’m now involved in it from the other side of the fence, I still take a lot of pleasure from the race.
© Flavien Duhamel/Red Bull Content Pool
Since you can’t ride in the dunes for ecological reasons, what are the difficulties involved in building a technically demanding track on a huge beach?
The design of this track is complicated by the fact that the beach has no natural relief. We start from a perfectly flat surface: the beach. We have to shape bumps, pits, turns, banked turns and finally, various technical points to make the circuit attractive and friendly.
Do you bring in the sand especially? How does it work?
But we don’t bring in the sand. What we do instead is that in October we place "ganivelles", wooden barriers, that trap the sand naturally brought there by tides and winter storms. They’re placed at the specific locations where you want to build a technical point and that, more or less, gives you the shape.
We talk about the 2012 course, is it perfect when you already have other ideas?.
For reasons of safety we hade to find ways to reduce the riders’ speed. In previous years, when we had an opening straight of six or seven miles, we had comptetitors coming with machines set up to go at crazy speeds just to get the holeshot. They had no longer control or anything. So working with the federation we imposed new regulations on the motocross machines and last year saw a big change in the style of racing.
It was a much shorter start and the riders raced around in a ‘S’-shaped circuit. It was much safer. It's pretty much the same route as last year, so we have some stability before making any more changes. But I’m quite happy with the track and work we’ve accomplished here. The local organisers understand exactly what I want to do and it's going really well. I should add that they started work here in mid-December last year. L’Enduropale is a team effort and we must not forget it.
And for 2013?
I’ve got lots of ideas. But we’ll watch what happens here this year and then we’ll make changes. But I can tell you more about that later.
Want more?
- Read Cyril Despres's blog at L'Enduropale
- Facts and figures on L'Enduropale
- More Hard Enduro on redbull.com
- Win Dakar prizes
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