Rally Raid
Dakar winning machine is off the leash in Far East
Watch Team Peugeot-Total’s Dakar conquering beast preparing to thunder through the Silk Way Rally.
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Peugeot will race their Dakar winner at Silk Way
The return for Team Peugeot-Total following their Dakar success will come at next month’s Silk Way.
The triumphant return to racing for Team Peugeot-Total following their Dakar Rally success earlier this year will come at next month’s Silk Way Rally.
Three Peugeot 2008 DKRs will roar over the start line in Moscow’s Red Square on July 8 as they embark on more than 10,000km of testing terrain through Russia, Kazakhstan and China.
The three crews in blue will be reigning Dakar champions Stéphane Peterhansel/Jean-Paul Cottret, WRC legends Sébastien Loeb/Daniel Elena and cross-country heavyweights Cyril Despres/David Castera.
With a total of 15 stages to master the Silk Way registers as the longest rally raid on the planet, with two more days of racing than even the mammoth Dakar Rally.
With the vast plateaus of Russia, the steep canyons of Kazakhstan and the fearsome Gobi Desert in China to negotiate this is clearly not a challenge of the faint-hearted.
But it’s for these very reasons that Team Peugeot-Total believe the Silk Way is the perfect testing ground ahead of a return to the Dakar next year where a successful defence of their title is the overriding ambition.
Watch the clip above to get a feel for the action that awaits Team Peugeot-Total in the Far East.
The adventure continues for Team Peugeot-Total
© Marcelo Maragni/Red Bull Content Pool
The Silk Way promises to be a tough test for Team Peugeot-Total as they gauge their development before a return visit to South America in January 2017 to contest the Dakar Rally.
One modification the drivers will be keen to test is the integration of air conditioning into the cars – and what better place to test this new feature than the Gobi Desert!
The sandy stages will give all three crews and their cars the chance to launch into the dunes as they prepare to improve performance in similar terrain to what they will find back at the next Dakar.
The Silk Way Rally is going to be very difficult with more than 10,700km in the heat and a lot of dunes and navigation on stages. The first challenge will be to cross the finish line in Beijing on July 24. No doubt we shall have some strong competitors, including some Russian, Kazakh and Chinese crews who can be very fast.
Meanwhile, the fourth Team Peugeot-Total driver Carlos Sainz will be competing on home soil next month in the Baja Aragon. Sainz and co-driver Lucas Cruz will pit their own Peugeot 2008 DKR against a number of fellow former Dakar winners in what also promises to be a hotly-contested race.
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