Rally Raid
Ride shotgun with Toby Price through Australia's Red Centre
For years, a Finke Desert Race victory eluded Toby Price on four wheels. Ridin' Shotgun, a new Red Bull TV documentary, goes inside his quest for glory.
Where some people see obstacles, Toby Price is wired to see opportunities. Yes, the 2021 Dakar Rally ended up with him in a Saudi Arabian hospital with a broken left collarbone rather than riding his KTM to victory for a third time, but was that setback about to stop him from trying to achieve something closer to home that had eaten away at him for years? Not a chance.
There's not many boxes the 34-year-old Australian hasn't ticked in his glittering off-road career, but the famed Finke Desert Race in his homeland was one of them. It wasn't that he'd not achieved success at Finke – Price has won the bikes category six times – but on four wheels? It was a rare hole in his CV and one that he was determined to fill, multiple shoulder surgeries be damned.
Price's quest for glory in Finke's car category is the subject of the new Ridin' Shotgun documentary and while it's a story with a happy ending, how that ending came to be has more twists and turns than the trip from Alice Springs in Australia's Top End to the small Aputula community, crossing the Finke River along the way.
If at first you don't succeed...
© Andy Green/Red Bull Content Pool
For the uninitiated, a quick Finke history lesson: the race began in 1976 when a group of local motorbike racers set themselves a challenge to see who could ride from Alice Springs to the Finke River and back the fastest – a 460km round trip that shadowed the Ghan railway line that ran the famous train from Darwin to Adelaide, a 3,000km journey through Australia's Red Centre.
The rail line has since moved 160km west, but the race still traverses the original track, meandering through notoriously gruelling outback terrain. What's more, it's held on the Queen's Birthday long weekend holiday in June each year – and could there be anything more Australian than to get together with your mates and race as fast you can through a desert on a weekend that acknowledges a Queen who rules from 16,000km away. No, we didn't think so either.
More Toby Price to read and watch
But let's get back to Price. Cars and off-road buggies joined the Finke fun in the late 1980s, and since then nobody has been able to win both the bike and car categories – a challenge he couldn't resist. Problem was, it was a challenge he kept falling short of every year after he finished second during his first four-wheel foray in 2016. The following year, plus 2018 and again in 2019 (when he led by more than seven minutes before a mechanical problem parked him) all ended in despair and the pandemic put paid to a 2020 redemption tour.
With Mark Dutton at his side, Price blitzed the run to Aputula
© Andy Green/Red Bull Content Pool
For 2021, Price's quest for four-wheel success was a slow-burn of a story, but one where time rapidly became in short supply. Riding the Finke was out of the question and he had to race the clock to even be fit to drive – and then there were the four wheels themselves, the fastest of fast rides that made it to Australia just in time.
There are trophy trucks that compete in the Finke and then there's Price's, which left him "speechless about what I was about to race." On the outside it's a Mitsubishi Triton, but dig a little deeper into the techs and specs, and you find a Dougan's 8-stack 6-litre engine with a six-speed paddle shift that pushes 750hp, all encased in a chassis featuring plenty of carbon fibre and state-of-the-art Motec electronics at the truck's nerve centre. Awesome doesn't even begin to describe it.
1 min
Toby Price's truck reveal
Take a look at the spec of the truck Toby Price will race with in the Finke Desert Race in 2021.
Ridin' Shotgun takes us on the journey to Finke before Price tackles the terrain, the stress of having his truck even make it to Australia in time for the event from the United States, the inevitable teething problems that come with throwing the bespoke behemoth straight into the fray after a quick 50km shakedown in the desert, as well as inside the unmistakable family bond that comes with Price, his parents John and Pauline, and a loyal bunch of family and friends who roll up their sleeves to help him achieve his goal.
The 45th edition of the Finke this June had more than 900 entrants, but there was one man – and that truck – that the spectators and other competitors wanted to see most. It was Price's magnetism that stood out for Mark Dutton, the team manager for the Red Bull Ampol Racing championship-winning Supercars team, who served as his navigator for the 'there' leg of the there and back race.
"Everyone lights up with Toby," Dutton says. "He's such an asset to this sport – the amount he gives back, the popularity he brings to it, it's truly amazing and he does it so well."
It was no surprise that Price's new trophy truck drew a crowd
© Andy Green/Red Bull Content Pool
Traversing the 230km from Alice Springs to Aputula was easy enough – in a record 1hr 39mins (we'll let that sink in for a moment), but after Dutton was swapped out for Joe Weining, the way back was, well, you can see the rest for yourself.
Suffice to say Price already has bigger goals in mind. "It took all that weight off my shoulders," he says of the breakthrough four-wheel triumph to go with his two-wheel titles. "It was pretty much my first race meeting back since my injury in Dakar. It was still a bit of an unknown with the shoulder. It was a bit of a concern, not knowing how comfortable I'd be for the weekend of racing, but being able to get a good result and have no pain or discomfort really ticked the boxes for us.
"Now that we've got this title out of the way, we might come back and try and do the double."
With Price, read 'might' for 'will'.
The run back to Alice was fraught, but successful
© Andy Green/Red Bull Content Pool
Watch Ridin' Shotgun on Red Bull TV, and download the free app to watch lots more motorsports action on all your devices.