Harith Noah is an Indian rally-raid motorcycle racer who has spent the last few years carrying Indian colours into some of the hardest endurance races on the calendar. As a factory rider with the Sherco TVS Rally team, his name has become closely tied to the Dakar Rally and the wider world of desert racing. The 2025 season, though, asked something different of him. It became less about results and more about recovery, patience, and learning how to rebuild after things go wrong early.
The year began the way most of his seasons do, with Dakar as the central pillar. That plan unravelled quickly. A crash in the prologue left him with a fractured wrist and an early exit from the rally that defines the rhythm of his year. “Every year starts with the Dakar, so always the main goal is to finish and do the best there, so that didn't really work out,” he said. What followed was not a clean reset but a more complicated road back. After returning to racing and starting to feel competitive again, he suffered another crash in South Africa and broke his other wrist. “Things like that happen back-to-back is a little, yeah… it's always not the best feeling when that happens,” he said.
Against that backdrop, his highlights shifted in meaning. Results were harder to chase, and he admits they did not come as easily as in previous seasons. “Obviously finishing a few rallies is definitely always a good thing,” he said, noting that simply reaching the end of events became a marker of progress. One of the clearer reference points came later in the year at Baja Aragon, where he finished fifth in the 450cc class as part of the FIM Bajas World Cup. It was not a headline result, but it confirmed that his speed and resilience were still there.
Away from the stopwatch, Noah found value in the process of rebuilding himself. “I tried to focus on the positives and try to really live the process of, you know, getting back into 100%,” he said. Rehabilitation became its own discipline, with small gains and lingering frustrations, but also a sense that he was learning something useful for the long term.
Looking ahead, Noah is already focused on the races scheduled at the beginning of 2026, before any real off-season has a chance to begin. The goal remains simple and unchanged. “My goals every time, it's almost always the same, it's to do my best, one kilometre at a time.”
For those joining the rally-raid grid, his advice is grounded and realistic. “Prepare for the worst, hope for the best,” he said, adding that racing, like life, rarely follows a straight line, and that committing fully to preparation is often the only controllable part.
