00:00I feel older. Rally makes you feel old.
00:10It will be now my fifth Dakar, but it feels like yesterday I was getting ready for my first one.
00:16It's been really crazy how time has gone.
00:19I think in 22 was so exciting because it was the unknown.
00:22Now I know what to expect. It's a little bit more scary.
00:25I've had a lot of kilometres under my belt, which just makes the experience that much better.
00:35I would say the biggest difference is my colour, of course.
00:38It was a massive change.
00:40For 22 years I only ride an orange bike and I was with KTM for 22 years.
00:45My whole life I ride a bike.
00:47Not only that, the history. My dad was in the factory team from KTM.
00:51I think in every professional athlete's career there's a big change somewhere.
00:55So, yeah, for sure it had to come at some point.
00:59I achieved my dream to be a factory rider.
01:01Where before you were always chasing.
01:03You know, chasing to get that phone call one day to say, hey, welcome to a factory team.
01:07From the team side, no, no pressure.
01:09They hired me for a reason.
01:11So I just need to remember to ride the bike to the best I can.
01:14Last Dakar, obviously I made the step to Rally GP.
01:18Immediately I felt, hey, I'm with the big guys now.
01:20Everything counts. You're one of the yellow numbers.
01:23It's special.
01:24And this is also a little bit of pressure to be in Rally GP
01:27because you want to be up there with the guys.
01:29At the moment the level is really high.
01:31Every day we are pushing and the mistakes you can have are really, really minimal.
01:36For sure, this is the top ten is the goal.
01:39But, yeah, for sure pushing for stage wins and, you know, really making the next step
01:45which is into that like top five sort of area.
01:48And I have a factory bike so I have no excuse.
01:51When I first got on I was expecting a big change because, of course,
01:55when you've only ridden one bike your whole life you are so used to that way.
01:59But really it was not such a big change.
02:02The feeling was quite similar.
02:04It's crazy to think but in theory I could go for another 15 Dakos.
02:09So when I think about this I'm like, wow, okay, that's a lot of time to come.
02:13But my dream was achieved and now this can be my career for a long time.
