Results from the Red Bull Erzbergrodeo Hare Scramble 2024, the second round of the 2024 FIM Hard Enduro World Championship, where Manuel Lettenbichler conquered his third consecutive victory in the Iron Giant and second win of the season, with a 20-minute advantage over his KTM teammate, Trystan Hart. Mario Roman took third after overtaking Graham Jarvis at the final checkpoints.

 

2024 Erzbergrodeo in a Nutshell:

  • The second round of the 2024 Hard Enduro World Championship took us to Erzberg, Austria, where changing weather conditions left some big puddles in parts of the track and made the forest sections quite slick.
  • Chris Gunderman was the fastest when the starting flag was raised, bagging himself the holeshot in the 2024 edition of the Erzbergrodeo Hare Scramble. Nevertheless, the joy didn’t last long for the Dutchman, as Mani Lettenbichler hunted him down in the blink of an eye just before reaching CP1.
  • From that moment on, with a free track ahead, the Red Bull KTM rider didn’t look back and progressively extended his advantage over the chasing group formed by Teodor Kabakchiev, Will Hoare, and Jonny Walker, who tried to reduce the gap before arriving at Carl's Dinner, where things started to get really technical.
  • Both Kabakchiev and Hoare will look back on a missed waypoint five in the woods, which accounts for the fact the pair were suddenly leading the way at CP 6. Ultimately that means both riders were clocked back to CP4 in the overall results after the race.
  • The comeback of the day award goes to Trystan Hart, who went down in the first corner of the race while battling for the holeshot and started passing riders to end up exiting Carl’s Dinner in second place.
  • With two hours of racing already under his belt and with some of his main rivals still navigating the big boulders, Lettenbichler entered the slippery woods sections filled with logs, roots, and tricky off-cambers.
  • Hart, two kilometers behind his KTM teammate, was running in second place, while Roman was already laying his eyes on third-placed Graham Jarvis by the time they reached the Chris' Stony Party section.
  • Before taking a breath to face the final stretch of the race after conquering Dynamite (CP 25 of the 27 in total), Mani's advantage was so big that he spent the last part of the race doing some wheelies for the live feed helicopter. After 2h48m, he made it to the finish to bag his third consecutive win at the Erzbergrodeo.

 

  • 20 minutes later, "The Robot" (Trystan Hart for those not-so-hardcore fans) was the second rider to see the checkered flag after practically riding the second half of the race on his own.
  • Mario crossed the finish line in third position after having to work together with Graham Jarvis to make it out of Motorex Highway – another fair play move from the hard enduro riders at this section that caused havoc the first time it was introduced in the race back in 2015.
  • Age seems not to take a big toll on Jarvis, who just clocked a solid fourth-place finish at the Iron Giant at 49 years young.
  • South African Wade Young proved once more that you don’t need a Factory Team backing you for a good result in hard enduro after finishing fifth on his GASGAS – learn more about his bike here.
  • The fight for sixth place wasn’t decided until the last wallride when Kabakchiev arrived with Jonny Walker right on his back wheel and ready to make the move on him.
  • Once the race was over, and it was announced that Kabakchiev, along with Hoare, had skipped CP5, that meant Walker jumps to seventh place and drops the total number of finishers to eight.
  • Seventh place overall and the only Junior to make it to the finish line honors went to Mitch Brightmore (TTR Squadra Corse), with Mathew Green (Rigo Racing) making it to the finish line in eight place right before the four-hour limit – the same scenario as last year for the South African.

2024 Erzbergrodeo results (official finishers):

rbe24-redbullerzbergrodeo-final-1

 

Photo Credit: Andrea Belluschi | Future7Media