Half Way Through the Silk Way Rally and Jurgen Schroeder and His Nissan are in 16th Overalll

In what is one of the longer, more difficult rally-raids the Silk Way Rally is often viewed as a precursor to the Dakar where the big boys come out to play and test their machines.

With Cyril Depres, Sebastian Loeb, Stephane Peterhansel, and Yazeed al Rajhi all present the leaderboard is stacked with potential Dakar 2017 winners.

Jurgen Schroeder and his son Max are piloting their South African built Nissan Navarra V8 across Russia, its former territories, and all the way to Beijing.  They have run well so far with a few navigation hiccups today that cost them some 10 minutes or more and leaves them in 16th place overall and one hour, nine minutes behind the leader, Cyril Despres.  The Nissan shop in South Africa run by Terence Marsh for Red Lined Motorsport has sent some mechanics to assist but otherwise this is a pure privateer effort.

Silk Way Rally Nissan Results through Stage 6

16th  Jurgen Schroeder, Nissan Navara, 1:08:54 adrift
20th  Sergey Uspenskiy, Nissan GForce Proto, 1:36:48
21st  Miao Ma, Nissan Pathfinder, 1:42:08
37th  Sergey Fomin, Nissan NP300 Pickup, 3:14:48
53rd  Rong Zi, Nissan Patrol, 4:45:21

Top Nissan Finisher at Italian Baja--Diesel Pathfinder

Before being stopped by a stalled engine due to a deep water crossing, Hector Oliveira and the VM Tecnosport team finished 12th in the Italian Baja this weekend.  Prior to the water injestion the team was running in the top 10. Given the Portuguese nature of the team one could expect them to show up at the Baja Portugal event later this year and run the Pathfinder there as well.

45 Entries, 13 Retirements (29% DNF rate), 8 Nissan Entries, 2 Retirements (25% DNF rate)

Nissan results for the event:

H. Oliveira, Diesel Pathfinder--12th
L. Lechowicz, Navara (Frontier) D40--22nd (2nd in T2 class)
A. Rossi, Pathfinder--25th
F. Crozzolo, Navara (Frontier) D40--27th
T. Piec, Navara (Frontier)--28th
A. Abdulla, Patrol Y62--29th
L. Traglio, Patrol Y61--Retired
A. Toro, Patrol Y61--Retired

Italian Baja Website...

Baja Rally 2.0 Video

Here is the recap of Baja Rally 2.0, a RallyRaid style event for motorcycles in Baja that announced today that it is partnering with a second RallyRaid event to be held in the southern Mexico state of Oaxaca and organized by the Rally Playero Entertainment group to form the Mexican National Cross Country Championship.

These events will also include ATVs and UTVs and are thus targeted squarely at the RallyRaid community participating in events like the Dakar and the European Cross Country Championship.

More info here:  Mexican Cross Country Championship...

China Wants to Dominate Everything--Even RallyRaid...

Now here's a surprise.  Its not often that I go to the English version of People's Daily...OK, I've never been to the People's Daily but there's a first time for everything.

Its an indication that China is looking to dominate EVERYTHING that it has now turned its attention to the relatively niche sport of RallyRaid.  Chinese authorities have announced the running of the inaugural, 10,0000 km long, China Grand Rally.  Its ambitions are stated to be nothing short of displacing the Dakar for the title of the toughest, most high profile rally in the world.

The English translation uses the word "ultra" quite a few times (ultra long, ultra tough, etc.) which seems likely to be a bit of hyperbole driven by translation but I don't doubt that the event will be well run and not have issues with the local "green" communities (when you have the ability to put a gun to the head of anyone causing a problem it usually mitigates any issues).

Supposedly invitations have gone out to those the Chinese would like to see show up for the event and I wonder how many non-Chinese are among them.  Not that the Chinese can't compete on the world stage in RallyRaid as they have had one of their Great Wall trucks finish in the top ten of the Dakar the last two years but it will be interesting to see who might show up.  Robby Gordon should ask for a big fat check in order to enter and give the event an air of international interest --his operations could definitely use the cash infusion.

Regardless, if you want to check out the website (still all in Chinese at the moment though it does have a non-working English tab, hopefully for future versions of the website) and purchase yourself some inaugural China Grand Rally merchandise you can get busy sending your greenbacks their way right now!!  And you can check out the article regarding the event on the People's Daily website below as well.

China Grand Rally website...

People's Daily article...