INTERVIEW: Justin Gerlach ready for Dakar Rally debut

The last time Justin Gerlach had a one-on-one conversation with The Checkered Flag, he was hoping to make his Dakar Rally début in 2024. However, the Amaury Sport Organisation told him soon after that his application had been rejected.

Fourteen months later, Gerlach sat down with TCF again for another chat. This time, he had his acceptance letter for the 2025 race in hand.

The Thumbs Up

The ASO started approving—or denying—2025 Dakar hopefuls in late July. Gerlach was among those fortunate enough to be in the first camp.

“When I got the email, I expected it to come one day later,” Gerlach began. “I was in a car together with my father and we were just chatting about some things. I went on my phone, I saw there’s an email, but I didn’t really think about that at this moment, and then it surprised me. I didn’t know what to say. It took me a moment. My dad was talking about whatever, I can’t even remember, and then suddenly I was quiet and he said, ‘What is it? What is it?’ We both realised, ‘We are going to Dakar.’

“It has sunk in a bit, but sometimes I’m still surprised. I’m just busy doing my all day work, and at some point I think about, ‘Well, it’s only, let me check… 112 days until Dakar.’

“It’s crazy. Sometimes I can’t realise it. Sometimes it gets me right away and I was like, ‘Oh shit, yeah, you’re doing it.’ It’s been part of my day since then, since the acceptance.”

It surely came with a sigh of relief, especially after the disappointment of 2023. He credits Ronan Valverde, the ASO’s competitor relations officer, with keeping his head up and providing advice on what to do in 2024.

“He was really kind,” recalled Gerlach. “He sent me a message after my rejection and said, ‘Hey mate, just keep it up, keep working, you will have your chance in the future.’ Last year, I didn’t really want to hear it, but after a few months, I came back to him and we were in contact all the time. He helped me during the process and gave me some advice on  how I can improve my chances. That’s basically it. I just kept on going and kept on working.”

Gerlach considered expanding his race schedule for 2024 to improve his chances of being accepted for 2025, though it turned out to be unnecessary when the ASO approved him. Thus, his 2024 rally calendar was not too different from what he did last year by tackling the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge and Rallye Breslau, along with the Fenix Rally as a co-driver.

“I believed in myself and I knew that I just had to keep on working in order to prove the ASO this time that I’m worthy of being accepted for Dakar and I can make it,” he commented. “Last year, I thought about this year and made some plans, ‘How can you qualify for Dakar? How can you improve your chances?’ That was the point where I decided to go to Abu Dhabi again.”

While his schedule was more of the same, he felt the ASO revising the Dakar qualifying process certainly helped made things easier. Besides the Road to Dakar, a programme that rewards the best riders at each World Rally-Raid Championship event with free registration for the Dakar Rally if they had no prior experience there, the organiser created a system that hands out points to those who successfully complete each race regardless of finish. Finishing the ADDC, being a W2RC desert race like Dakar, earns you twelve points whereas Breslau, a non-FIM event in the forests of Poland, yields two points.

He had mulled between Abu Dhabi or the Rallye du Maroc, the latter also a desert rally worth twelve points as the final race of the W2RC, but his familiarity with the former convinced him to head back to the UAE.

Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge

Held in late February a month after Dakar, the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge is the second round of the W2RC. Gerlach had made his championship début at the 2023 edition, where he finished twenty-second overall in Rally2 and third in Junior Trophy for riders under twenty-five. He had run in the top fifteen for much of the rally, but his final position was weighed down by battery and gearbox problems during the third stage which forced him to retire from it. While he returned for the last two days, he was still rather frustrated with the result.

“Last year, I went home and I thought, ‘Ugh, I didn’t do every kilometre because of the issue I had on the third day last year,'” Gerlach remarked.

He arrived at the 2024 ADDC on a new KTM 450 Rally Replica that he purchased in Dubai.

“I had to prepare it before the race and it was really busy times, but still in the end it was a great race,” he continued. “Compared to last year, I saw that I improved a lot, so maybe it’s not too bad that I took a shot for the Dakar this year and not last year because I saw that the level of racing was about the same when it comes to stage length and from the terrain. I was able to deal a lot better with it and I was faster and I felt better, more consistent.”

After finishing seventeenth in class in the Prologue and twenty-first in Stage #1, his race was literally flipped upside down the next day. While riding with Jean-Philippe Revolte, dust from his fellow rider’s bike kicked up into Gerlach’s vision. By the time he realised what was going on, he had overshot the upcoming dune.

“We were going side by side, and we saw the camera guys on top of the dune. I am experienced so I know if there are camera guys, you should be more careful than usual,” Gerlach started. “But in that moment, he gave a little more gas down the dune than normal and sprayed me completely into my face, all the sand and I couldn’t see anything. I was like, ‘Whoa, what’s happening?’ I opened my eyes again and I was jumping over the dune. It was a mistake from my side, obviously I could have been more careful. The front wheel sank in, the bike flipped.”

He managed to avoid getting hurt and finished the leg in twenty-sixth. Photos of the accident, taken by Edoardo Bauer of Rally Zone, spread like wildfire around the bivouac:

“It was funny for me in the evening, but obviously I was a bit through the wind. I had to find myself the rhythm again. In the evening when I came back to the camp, a lot of people showed me the picture and said, ‘Oh, what was happening?’ They didn’t know it was me. Some people were chatting in the local racing groups and said, ‘Oh, that’s not how it’s supposed to be,’ and stuff. People showed it to me and then I said, ‘Yeah, it was crazy. I was very lucky.’

“‘You were very lucky!?’ ‘Yeah, that’s me.’

“I got the photo package and then I have the whole photo series of it. They’re like twenty pictures where you can make a video out of it, like snapshots. They called it unofficially the picture of the race.

“I’m just really lucky to walk away from it. All the photographers were there, I just picked the bike up,” he remembered as he gave a thumbs-up gesture, “‘Yeah, thank you. Thank you,’ and just kept going. It took me one or two minutes to stop and take a moment and realise, ‘Well, that was a big one, but nothing was broken.’ I was fine and nothing on the bike was broken. Nothing was broken. The handlebars were straight. I could just continue on and I was so lucky about that.

“I hope I learned from that. I took some time to reflect on it, how it happened and how I can prevent it the next time.”

With his bike still in good shape, he pressed on. Gerlach finished twenty-fourth in Stage #3 before cracking the top twenty for the first time on the fourth leg. Even for the last day, Stage #5 was a tricky one to navigate through, but he managed to make it through without much problem and finished eighteenth.

Gerlach officially ended the ADDC with a seventeenth in Rally2. Like last year, he was third for the Junior Trophy.

While overall a solid rally save for the accident, Gerlach admitted he had some thoughts beforehand of “what happens if you don’t finish again” since “a lot can happen during a race. A lot can go wrong and I wouldn’t have finished the race.” Once the ADDC kicked off, however, he “just tried to make my mind free of that.

“If you are starting the stage and think about how you can’t make a mistake or if you’re worrying, it can go wrong. You just have to free yourself from that. During the race, I didn’t think of it because I was busy all day riding and also preparing afterwards. After the race, I realised, ‘Yeah, okay, perfect. Pressure is gone. You did it. It was a huge step in the direction of Dakar.’ Everything went well, I’m happy about it.”

Given the similar profile to Dakar, which is held in neighbouring Saudi Arabia, many riders flock to the ADDC to earn their tickets to the race. Besides Gerlach, other successful efforts included Willem Avenant, Damien Bataller, Nerimantas Jucius, Iván Merichal, Mykolas Paulavičius, and Gediminas Satkus. Avenant spoke with TCF about his acceptance in August.

Rallye Breslau

Shortly before getting the Dakar green light from the ASO, Gerlach went to Poland for his seventh Rallye Breslau. However, he was almost close to arriving without a proper set of wheels.

“For Abu Dhabi, I sold my new bike in Germany to be able to afford the start cost and also the bike there, so about two weeks before the race, I still had no bike to compete but I was registered,” Gerlach said. “I decided to use the KTM 950 from my dad, which was like the worst case scenario but still for me, ‘Okay, you will be on the start line and you will make some experience,’ but I knew that I wouldn’t be competitive.”

The KTM 950 is a dual-sport adventure motorcycle with almost twice as big of an engine as a standard rally bike. While such massive bikes were not uncommon during the Dakar Rally’s early days and the FIM Bajas World Cup recently introduced a Trail category for bikes over 600cc, they are not exactly built for modern rally raids.

Fortunately for him, Viking Motors was willing to provide a Sherco 450 SEF Rally for the race. Viking Motors is an auto shop and dealership in Hönow near Berlin, whose boss Bernd Zwanzig is “also a huge Dakar fan. We were talking about how he would like to support me and then I got the chance to get a brand new 450 Sherco for competing at Rally Breslau and even now still for training purposes. He gave it to me in order to support me and I’m really thankful for that.

“During Breslau, the bike was really, really good. Sure, I had to adapt at first. I got it with 0.5 hours on the engine. I did a half an hour of training on it and then I brought the suspension to my suspension guy here in nearby Berlin and said, ‘I need a good rally suspension.’ I put it back in and at the start line was really the first time I rode the bike like this.

“It’s a great bike. I was really happy with it. I only had some issues on Thursday with the fuel consumption, but I would tend to say that was maybe my mistake because I was giving it a little too much gas, maybe for the stage length.”

The only Sherco in the field, Gerlach finished seventeenth in the Enduro class. Given the circumstances, it was certainly an improvement from the wrist injury he sustained at the 2023 race. His father Hardin Gerlach finished fifty-sixth on a KTM 400 EXC.

“The end result was not the top ten I expected, maybe because of the time I lost on the first day without fuel but also some waypoints I missed even though I tried to navigate precisely. Still, in the end, it’s a good experience and especially after last year where I broke my wrist at Breslau,” he stated. “For me to come back and finish it this year was important also for my mind and my motivation.”

Held on the military training grounds at Żagań and Drawsko Pomorskie, Rallye Breslau celebrated its thirtieth anniversary in 2024. While the tight and twisty roads are much different from the deserts of Dakar, many Dakar competitors tend to race at Breslau for additional training; 2024 Enduro winner Bartłomiej Tabin had made his Dakar début earlier in the year.

Gerlach is fond of Breslau, having raced it since 2018. He told TCF in 2023 that the race is an important part of off-road motorsport in Europe, where there are not many rally raids that offer FIM-style racing, and has a friendly nature that gives it a familial vibe.

“Breslau is my favorite race every year because for me, it’s like coming home,” he explained. “They call it the Breslau Family. For me, it’s also family because I know so many people in the camp and all the German guys, also international guys I get to meet every year there.”

Preparing for Dakar

While Gerlach liked the Sherco in Poland and the brand is the reigning Rally2 winner, he will race a 2020 KTM 450 Rally Replica at the 2025 Dakar instead. Shercos at Dakar are limited to Sherco TVS Rally Factory Team members to the point where “even for [Bernd] as a Sherco dealer, he’s not able to get a bike.”

“It’s not that I wouldn’t have trusted Sherco with the task of doing Rally Dakar,” he clarified, “but to prepare an enduro bike like this 450 for Dakar is just too much work and too much risk. If you have the option of a KTM Rally Replica, which is well proven on Dakar, that’s just the best shot for me now.”

Gerlach is currently focusing on rebuilding the KTM before it is to be brought to Barcelona in late November, where it will be shipped to Saudi Arabia along with all the other vehicles. The bike will be prepared by DUUST Rally Team, whose riders Konrad Dąbrowski and Jean-Loup Lepan are respectively third and fourth in the W2RC Rally2 points.

With a bike and crew set, the next goal is to afford the trip to Saudi Arabia. Besides paying for travel, lodging, and the entry fee, down payments must be made to the ASO at various times throughout the fall. Gerlach said to TCF last year that he planned to sell his car and close his savings accounts had he been accepted for the 2024 Dakar; he ultimately did the latter anyway in order to make it to Abu Dhabi.

Whereas privateer riders tend to start fundraisers or host events, Gerlach is mainly using his job as an industrial engineer to cover the costs.

“After my rejection last year, I had to make a decision whether to go for Dakar competition next year or to work on my education and my career,” Gerlach stated. “At the end of last year, I started my master’s. I’m even working less now, twenty hours a week earning less money, so that’s a big topic. Right now, there’s a semester break during the two semesters where I’m working forty hours a week just to get every cent possible to put it in the Dakar project.

“I don’t want to look at my bank accounts, but I think there’s less than a hundred euros right now because everything is going into the Dakar. Other than that, to pay for the entry fee and for the service team, at least the part of the service team, I’m having a credit now which is being paid out next month but it’s €50,000. My plan was to pay most of it alone. I’m having a payment plan now for the next seven years.”

He is also banking on the help of sponsors who support his cause. His largest backer is the Allgemeiner Deutscher Automobil-Club (ADAC), the largest automobile federation in Germany who has also sanctioned racing series like Formula 4 and the ADAC Opel Electric Rally Cup.

“I’m going to pay off my back for next January,” he commented. “Some people here understand my motivation, some people in Germany call me crazy, but it’s just the way I’m doing it.

“I’m still looking for partners and sponsors who believe in my dream. That’s a lot of work and still working on it, still having trust that I will still find other partners who are supporting me. I’m sure not every solution is found right now for that, but I will be able to keep up with my payment plan for Dakar also with the rally team. I’m sure nothing can stop me right now in making it to the start line.”

During his interview last year, Gerlach made a point of wanting to bring his father with him if he could afford it. This time, he is confident that he can—and will—make it happen.

“It’s not an option of if I do it, I will do it for sure,” he expressed. “We have planned it already. He will not be my mechanic as he was in Abu Dhabi in the last two years, he will just be my supporter. As a competitor, you have the option to bring family members and sponsors for the whole race. It’s still a lot of money. If I remember it right, it’s like €4,000 just to bring a supporter with you, a friend or family or sponsor to spend the whole two weeks.

“But my dad, I can’t imagine not bringing him. I’m really looking forward to sharing the whole two weeks with him and hopefully to be at the finish podium together with him. We made the agreement that he will have to pay for himself because I can’t put it in my budget. I would love to, but if I find a sponsor, no one says, ‘Yeah, here’s the money, do it.’ I’m afraid that won’t happen.”

Although most tend to enter races like the Rallye du Maroc in October as a dress rehearsal for Dakar, Gerlach is opting to play it safe between now and January to avoid getting hurt. That’s not to say that he will be on the sidelines all autumn as he plans to do some local enduro races to “improve myself on the technical abilities because I’m sure that Dakar will not only be sand and fast routes.

“As I saw from this year, there are a lot of technical areas with stones and hill climbs. I think the terrain will be very diverse, so I’m trying to improve my abilities right now with the technical stuff and do kind of riding. Other than that in preparation, it’s all about physical preparation except from riding the bike.”

Rather than riding, his main focus is on staying fit. After all, a common adage is that “Dakar is only 20 percent being at the race itself and 80 percent being preparation.” As part of his regimen, Gerlach is “running as much as I ever did” with “three cardio sets a week and going to the gym. It’s a lot of work and it’s a lot of hours every week. Even if it’s still so far in the future, it’s busy times.”

The 2025 Dakar Rally

The 47th Dakar Rally will take place on 3–17 January. Although it is the sixth straight year that the Dakar is in Saudi Arabia, Gerlach feels it is “going to be a very interesting edition.”

For 2025, the ASO has added quirks to keep the rally fresh while it stays in Saudi Arabia, as is contracted through 2029. The two-day Chrono Stage, which was introduced in 2024, has been expanded to 950 kilometres and is what Gerlach expects to be “a hard challenge.” The bikes will also take a separate route from the cars on five stages for safety reasons.

The terrain catches his eye as well. Many drivers and riders struggled with flat tyres early because of the rocks at the 2024 race, with the first stage being so bad that 2022 winner Sam Sunderland called it “some of the worst kilometres” he had ever done.

Hoping to make things a little more bearable for everyone, the 2025 route will “be less stony, less gravelly, more sand.” Gerlach welcomes the change, calling it “good for me because from Abu Dhabi, I’m rather used to riding in the sand, not too much on the stones. I wouldn’t have a problem going through the stones, but I won’t be as fast. So for me, maybe the new route is good.”

However, the feature that he considers his “personal highlight” is the mass start on the final day, which was last done in the 1980s. Because the rally will end in the Empty Quarter’s open desert, there is enough space to have every vehicle begin the last stage at the same time, separated by class.

“I don’t know how many bikes are still in on the last day, but let’s say it’s 100 bikes next to each other starting,” started Gerlach. “At this moment where 100 engines are starting, revving up and like giving it full gas direction to the final stage, really to the finish, everything can happen, but that moment, I think that’s going to be magical. I will give so much energy back even though I’m going to be completely exhausted probably on the last day. If I can make it to the mass start to the last day, I’m sure I can make it to the finish.”

Like most competitors who talked with TCF before their first Dakars, his main goal is to reach the finish. While a high position is certainly welcome, he is not keen on having that on his mind.

“I thought about it, but I’m trying to get rid of every aspect of trying to achieve a certain position,” he admitted. “I will be struggling for sure. You can work as much as possible before and that’s what I’m doing right now, but it’s going to be brutal. I’m sure, especially the second week after rest day, it will be a fight every morning even to get up and get on the bike.

“It’s going to be a mental challenge. For me, it’s really to make it to the finish ramp where my father will be. Hopefully, my mother will fly to Saudi Arabia to meet me there, and also one of my best friends is going to visit me the last three days.

“To make it to these last days where my best friend is coming in, my mother’s coming in, my dad will be there, that’s my main goal. To share the moment at the finish line with them, that’s just what I’m looking for. Everything else comes after because if I’m trying to push more than I’m capable of just because I want to reach a certain position, personally it would risk too much.”

Should he arrive at the finish ramp in Shubaytah, Gerlach would be the youngest German rider to complete the Dakar. The record is currently held by Mike Wiedemann, who was twenty-four when he did the 2022 race, while Gerlach will not reach that age until next April. He and Wiedemann, who races solo in the Original by Motul (Malle Moto) subcategory, are good friends.

“It kind of motivated me to do it this year definitely,” Gerlach noted on the record. “I would be lying if I said something else because that’s a chance I will never have again. Maybe in a couple of years if I do Dakar, it was never a question of doing it, it was rather a question of when I will do it. I wouldn’t be happy if I missed this chance and for me, the chance is there now. Being able to be the youngest German ever at the start line is great and I’m sure in the next month, something can happen, but I hope I will make it. I’m sure that’s great.

“But I have to say I have the biggest respect for Mike. We were doing local races here in Germany together and he’s a very kind guy. He’s very helpful. He made it to the finish on his first Dakar as a rookie, as a young guy. That’s my aim. Yeah, I’m the youngest at the start line, but to be the youngest at the finish line is a big challenge and we will see what happens.

Once Dakar is done and dusted, he does not expect to be a regular competitor, as much as he would like to.

“I’m paying off a credit for the next seven years at least,” Gerlach commented. “I can’t do it like this every year where I’m like taking money from a credit to make it to Dakar. We will see what happens.

“I’m sure I will make it possible to come back to Rallye Breslau because for me it’s a very convenient race, but I’m not too sure if someone will see me next year at the World Championship races. Maybe if it’s possible, I would surely do it. But from my personal side financially, it’s going to be very difficult.”

Having said that, he is not ruling out returning to the Dakar in a slightly different capacity. One option is to be a car co-driver like he does at the Fenix Rally, where he calls the shots for Ali Gharib in a 2006 Land Rover Defender. While it is “nothing too serious” at the moment, Gerlach and Gharib, who raced the Dakar Rally in 2015, have thought about doing the 2026 Dakar Classic in the Land Rover; the Dakar Classic is a regularity race reserved for vehicles built before 2005 and held at the same time as the main rally. Although their Land Rover is a 2006 model, he assumes the range will be expanded with each year.

“Doing my two competitions at Fenix Rally, I was a navigator in the desert, and I really like it,” he began. “I think for the future, that would be something that would really, really interest me.

“Maybe it’s an option to do the Dakar Classic or maybe the normal Dakar in the car as a navigator. I think that that would really, really interest me and I would really hope that that can work out somehow.”

Rally in Germany

“Everyone who thinks about doing Dakar should start today, because it’s a long way.”

– Justin Gerlach

Although Germany has claims to Dakar history like 1985 Truck winner Karl-Friedrich Capito, 2000 overall champion Jutta Kleinschmidt, and current W2RC bike competitor Sebastian Bühler, Gerlach admits the sport is not exactly popular among the younger community in his home country. If he wanted to find someone to talk about the race with, he typically has to approach the older generations.

“They’re asking me, ‘What are you doing now?’, or ‘What are you trying to achieve? You are racing motorcycles?’ I say, ‘Yeah, I do Rally Dakar.’ Some say, ‘Oh, I know Rally Dakar from Eurosport, from television,’ but mostly when I go to races and I talk to people of my age, they don’t really know about Rally Dakar. It’s rather the fathers who are interested in Rally Dakar,” remembered Gerlach.

“I can remember when I was at the first junior motorsport event from the ADAC, there’s a pool of young motocross and enduro racers, kart racers, rally racers with me, and we were training together and doing some stuff together. We were sitting together and then they introduced me because it’s more of the motocross and the enduro youth and they know each other for years, then it was me.

“I said, ‘Yeah, I’m doing rally racing.’ All the kids thought I would be in a car, but the fathers and the parents who were sitting next to us, they were like, ‘Oh yeah!’ In the evening when we were eating together, I was with the fathers at the table and then were talking about Rally Dakar and they were all over it. They loved it. They all said, ‘Yeah, I was following it twenty years ago! Holy shit! Nice! Do it!’

“But it’s difficult in Germany. If I look at finding sponsors, it’s more difficult I think than in other countries. It’s giving me a hard time right now, but doesn’t matter. I’m working on it.”

Since they are still in their twenties, Gerlach and Wiedemann figure to move the needle and get those in their age range interested. Of course, this is easier said than done because rally is an increasingly expensive discipline to get into.

“I have to say that Mike is a few steps further than me for sure. Even in local enduro racing, he’s faster than me,” Gerlach quipped. “We both are the young guys, young German guys at Dakar. I think it’s very unique because when I look at the next years, I think there will not be many young people from Germany who will make it to Dakar. There are a few around Mike, some friends up here who are also trying to achieve that, and I hope they’ll make it.

“But rally racing for young people is getting really difficult because it’s getting more expensive. Even the entry fees are getting more expensive, but also the equipment you need. You need an airbag jacket which costs you €2,500 with the cartridges and all that. It’s difficult for young riders in Germany to afford that, especially also because the sport is not too big here and you cannot really train in Germany.

“I’m happy that Mike and I are a kind of picture of the young generation, and I hope that we can build on that and that there are other young riders who we can convince. Rally racing in Germany was bigger at some point, I’m sure, and we have very famous German riders and drivers who made it successful at Dakar and why shouldn’t we keep it up?”

He might not be a big name star or competing for the World Championship, but Gerlach is willing to be an ambassador for the sport and help find pathways for anyone who wants to try. Even a new member to the Breslau Family, regardless of their Dakar aspirations, is something that would more than please him to see.

“Everyone who thinks about doing Dakar should start today, because it’s a long way,” he concluded. “If someone is interested and wants to know how things are working out, I’m really happy to share my experience. I’m not trying to make it behind a closed door and just try to make it myself. I’m really happy about everyone who would like to ask me about how to make it to Dakar even it’s just like, ‘I want to do it at some point. How can I do it?’

“If you have not even made the first step or something, feel free to ask me because I would be really happy to help everyone doing it. When I look at rally racing, it’s a community. What makes it special is that everyone helps each other. I’m sure that if there’s someone I can bring to rally racing, even if it’s only participation in Breslau, I gain one more friend and I gain someone who would be willing to help me on track and that I would like to help.

“So yeah, if someone is interested, let me know. I would be happy to help you to get a foot into this sport.”

Interview on YouTube