On May 23, the third stage (SS3) of the 2019 China Ring Tower (International) Rally pushed the race to a watershed. In the car group, 89 cars drove into the track on the same day, and only 65 cars rushed to the track in the end. Make it back to camp just before the closing time of the hour. As for the 17 cars in the motorcycle group, only 8 cars became the lucky ones. This N39 stage is comparable to the Yingwusitang stage that year.
The picture comes from the official photography team
Moving from Aksu to Markiti, the competition officially touches the Taklimakan Desert, which is located in the center of the Tarim Basin. It is about 1,000 kilometers long from east to west, 400 kilometers wide from north to south, and covers an area of 337,600 square kilometers. It is second only to the Sahara Desert in Africa. It is the second largest desert in the world and the largest in my country.
The third stage is a special stage of more than 300 kilometers. Part of the route crosses the “Road of Life” in the Taklamakan Desert along the 39th parallel north latitude, which is often called N39. The Taklamakan Desert is a popular desert. Its difficulty lies in its unpredictability. It is easy to trap cars on the dusty sand surface, and it is difficult to get out of it. On the day of the race, the surface temperature was as high as 60 degrees, and the race lasted for seven or eight hours. Such intensity was a torment for the drivers, and it was also a tough test of physical fitness and willpower.
The picture comes from the official photography team
At the players’ meeting, the Ring Tower Organizing Committee set the difficulty of the SS3 and SS4 stages as nine levels, which is one of the most difficult stages in the history of the Ring Tower Rally. Sure enough, a considerable number of drivers could not reach the finish line within the cut-off time and had to stay on the track overnight. While watching the brutality of the competition, we should also see that the two drivers Liu Yangui and Christian of the Beijing Off-Road Family Team easily broke through. Even the 60-year-old Liang Bo and the female driver Sun Xiangyan returned to the camp before closing.
The 2019 Ring Tower SS3 stage clearly draws a dividing line. The big professional teams show their advantages in such a devil stage in terms of backup support and coping ability, while the small teams need more luck and patience to go further.
The SS3 stage tests the physical fitness, experience, technology, and mentality of the drivers, as well as the performance of the car and the logistical support of the team, and even requires a little luck. Shen Weijian of the Lion Energy Storage Team thought about it after the race, and thought that such a stage is actually not particularly difficult. It is a test of mentality. If you follow the road book carefully, you can reduce the chance of getting stuck in the sand, but what really makes the driver collapse is obviously And hot weather and physical fitness. Among the locals, the Taklamakan Desert is a “sea of death” that they can enter but cannot get out of. Drivers wearing thick racing suits and helmets still need to face the glitches caused by the high temperature of the car. Many people’s mentality is constantly digging sand, and they are almost depressed during the stop-and-go for eight or nine hours.
Therefore, each team and each driver has different goals and positioning in the Tournament Rally, but the track designed by the organizing committee has only one standard, and it is impossible to take into account all of them. If you want to give the top 30 If the driver increases the difficulty, then the more than 60 drivers behind will need to meet a greater test.
Because the SS4 stage is a reverse run of the SS3 stage, it is dangerous to continue the race before the car is dragged out of the track. More importantly, the Kashgar area will also usher in a level 8 sandstorm, which will greatly affect the safety of the drivers. Therefore, the Organizing Committee of the Ring of Towers Rally canceled the SS4 stage after comprehensive consideration of all parties. This is a routine operation and one of the countermeasures. In any cross-country rally in the world, it is not uncommon for stages to be canceled due to safety issues. In the 2019 Dakar Rally, the organizing committee canceled the ninth stage because of landslides caused by heavy rain in Argentina.
The picture comes from the official photography team
The driver’s safety is guaranteed. During the nearly 80 years of racing development, both active safety measures and passive safety measures have been continuously improved. The car groups trapped on the track have GPS positioning monitoring, chasing cars distributed throughout the stage, satellite phones, rescue helicopters to drop supplies, and commercial rescue, etc. As for the participating drivers themselves, many of them are often active in domestic or even international cross-country rally competitions, and they also have rich competition experience and countermeasures. At the end of the track, we can see countless sensational moments, but behind what we can’t see, there is a strong enough force to ensure the safety of the event and the safety of the drivers. This kind of strength is at the forefront of all the car groups.
On the morning of May 24th, the Organizing Committee of the Tournament of Tajikistan Rally and the Makiti County Government of Kashi Prefecture arranged for rescue helicopters to carry drinking water, food and other relief supplies to the track to deliver supplies to the racers and staff stranded in the desert. Rescue vehicles have also entered the desert to drive to the trapped people. So far, all the trapped cars and drivers have been safely evacuated, and no one was injured.
We need the spirit of the ring tower, and we also need the feelings of the journey. Every year, people will leave the ring tower, but more people will come back the next year. It is precisely because of such an unforgettable experience that people will never forget it after leaving.
