The Yamaha Ténéré 700 World Rally GYTR enjoyed a record-breaking return to its spiritual African home during the 2024 Africa Eco Race, with Alessandro Botturi and Pol Tarrés securing a double podium for the Ténéré Yamaha Rally Team. Yet, there was even more success for the twin-cylinder adventure bike born in the Sahara Desert, with Nicholas Charlier finishing ninth overall on the standard production version of the machine with the three-stage GYTR kits fitted.
The 2024 Africa Eco Race (AER) will go down on record as one of the most hotly contested ever. A three-way battle at the front saw Botturi and Tarrés fight for the overall victory right to the final stage, as the 700M class bikes dominated the rest of the field. Botturi secured a spectacular second and just missed out on the win by a margin of six minutes and 38 seconds after almost 40 hours of racing.
While the AER has proved a happy hunting ground for experienced Italian Botturi in the past, with the 48-year-old winning it twice previously in 2019 and 2020 on a Yamaha YZ450F, his teammate Tarrés only made his debut in the 2022 edition after switching from racing hard enduro to rally raid that year.
Despite being only the second rally of his career, Tarrés created history by becoming the first person to complete the entire race on a twin-cylinder adventure bike. Incredibly, just 14 months later, he would return to Africa to finish third overall and complete a double podium for the team.
Underscoring the strength of Ténéré 700 World Rally, Tarrés and his teammate Botturi won seven of the 12 stages between them and enjoyed an over four-hour advantage over the chasing pack of 450cc single-cylinder bikes in the final general classification, showcasing just how far the project has progressed.
Billed as one of the toughest rallies in the world, the AER starts in Monaco and retraces the 1970s routes of the original Paris-Dakar. It traverses North-West Africa and covers more than 6,500km over some of the most demanding terrain on the planet through Morocco, Western Sahara, and Mauritania before finishing alongside the legendary Lac Rose in Dakar, Senegal.
