About Us

Lee Palmer

was born in Kalgoorlie, WA. He grew up in Bathurst and Inverell and started riding motorbikes at 15 years of age. By trade a motorbike mechanic he also had the passion for riding motorbikes. He was racing motocross and cross country races, and in 1996 he won the Australian Cross Country Championship as well as his class in the Australian Safari. In 1997 he spent a year as a tour guide for Cape York motorcycle tours before he went to New Zealand for work and racing. He rode for the New Zealand Junior Trophy team at the International Six Day Enduro gaining a Silver Medal. Lee then went to Europe and raced enduro and MX in Sweden. Extreme enduro races like the Gotland Grand National and Novemberkasan, and even the Rain Forest Challenge in Malaysia were on his agenda. He was soon known by other riders and teams and it didn’t take long for KTM to offer him a position in their race department. He started working with the international KTM motocross team winning the world title in 2000 with Grant Langston. In 2001 Lee switched to the KTM rallye department and helped develop the rallye bike which has won every Dakar and many other cross country rallies since. Despite his work commitments and a lot of traveling Lee never lost his racing spirit. He was racing enduro and motocross all over Europe, he was e.g. one of the few finishers in the Erzberg Enduro in 2004. Traveling to Africa many times he got more and more fascinated by the beauty of the desert. He got to see the incredible landscapes of Africa, South America, America, Asia and the UAE, either on a bike, in a car or even in a truck. In 2002, Lee marked a 4th place overall in the Dakar rallye as a navigator in a race truck. Overall Lee can look back on eight participations in the Rallye Dakar and countless other rallies and adventures on two or four wheels. Needless to say he caught the the “rallye bug”, got himself a rallye bike and started racing cross country rallies all over the world. In 2004 he scored a 3rd place in the Por Las Pampas Rallye in Argentina, and in 2005 he achieved a 7th place in the Orient Rallye in Turkey and a 9th place in the UAE Desert Challenge. However, after a couple of tragic accidents in the KTM team he decided to stop racing rallye bikes and instead use his good navigation skills as a navigator in race cars. He was first with Volkswagen and then switched to X-raid BMW where he achieved a 2nd place in the 2007 Patagonia Atacama Rallye in Chile and was close to win Tunesia Rallye 2008 when the car broke on the second last day of the race. Despite his co-driver’s career the bikes were calling him again and he spent one year with BMW in Munich to develop their new 450X race enduro bike. Also after returning to Australia, Lee still keeps going back occasionally for co-driving in international cross country rallies. In June 2010 he was co-driving in the Landrover Discovery of German Amadeus Matzker at the Estoril-Portimao-Marrakech Rallye being held in Portugal and Morocco (see our NEWS section for more info).

Lee Palmer Racing History

Claudia Palmer

was born in Munich, Germany. She grew up in Hindelang, a small Bavarian mountain village and from her 18th birthday on she was spending her week-ends and holidays riding her motorcycle through the European Alps. Claudia is a sports equipment sales person by trade, but her interest in foreign languages and cultures inspired her to follow up her talent for languages and study to become a foreign language correspondent. In 1995 she started working for Richard Schalber, a former world enduro champion who was tuning BMW motorcycles and organizing enduro trainings, tours and rallyes. Being the sole secretary, Claudia was managing the office handling a broad variety of jobs which included parts orders and dispatch as well as organizing events and rallies. The Schalber company got assigned the BMW F650 Rallye project in 1997, this was Claudia’s stepping stone into the rallye business. Over the past ten years, Claudia has worked as a Team Manager and Coordinator for BMW Motorrad and the KTM Rallye Team, then for the car teams of Volkswagen and X-raid BMW. She speaks 4 languages fluently and has traveled the world as much as her husband Lee. Claudia’s list of achievements counts many cross country rallies, amongst them ten times Dakar and three Australian Safaris.