FINKE DESERT RACE

TOBY Price will have a helicopter and light aircraft on hand when he takes on one of Australia’s toughest, most remote sporting events.

The one-time Dakar Rally champion is aiming to become the first driver to conquer both the bike and truck editions of the Finke Desert Race at a single event.

It’s a double he came within a whisker of nailing two years ago and one that brings with it significant challenges.

At best, Price will have 40 minutes rest between doing the two sprint legs that each will involve roughly an hour

■ Two-day off-road race

■ Bike and truck categories, with hundreds of competitors in each category

■ Saturday qualifying

■ Sunday race day 1: Alice Springs to Finke (also known as Aputula), where competitors set up camp overnight

■ Monday race day 2: Finke

and 55 minutes of speeding 230km flat out through the rugged desert terrain that separates Alice Springs and Finke.

The Gold Coaster hopes to maximise his possible rest by qualifying well tomorrow to give him priority road order.

Then, Sunday will see him drive his truck from Alice Springs to Finke, fly back to Alice Springs Airport and do the course again, this time back to Alice Springs

■ Toby Price and Russell Hazelwood among competitors

aboard a motorcycle. After camping the night in the tiny Northern Territory town, Monday will be more of the same – but in reverse.

And that’s if all goes to plan. “Once you leave Alice Springs, there’s not really much other than small shrubs and a lot of red dirt,” said Price, who is third in the SuperUtes series. “It’s very remote and if things go wrong, it can get quite dangerous out there.

“It’s a bit of a logistics nightmare for us.

“So with the trophy truck, once I leave early in the morning, we have a helicopter that will follow me along the course.

“If the truck breaks or has an issue that we can’t fix and we go past our cut-off time, basically wherever the truck sits, whether it is on four wheels or on its roof, the helicopter will land and take me straight back to the start line to jump on the motorcycle.

“At the end of the day, the motorcycle is our main priority, it is our everyday job.

“But if all goes well and we make it to the end, we have an eight-seat plane and it gets me back 15 or 20 minutes quicker. Every minute counts.”

Price, 30, placed third in the 2018 edition of Dakar.