René Metge, three-time winner of the Dakar Rally and icon of French motor sports, has created a totally new endurance race for motor sports enthusiasts: the Transorientale Rally. The rally raid, hailed as the biggest car race in the world, will start on June 12, 2008 from St. Petersburg in Russia and end on July 28 in Beijing at the foot of the Great Wall.

Five types of road vehicles, including cars, motorcycles, four-wheelers and trucks are allowed to take part in the race which will for the first time also feature a relay category that allows several people to take turns driving one vehicle.

The basic principle of the marathon rally raid is simple: to drive the 10,000-km journey between St. Petersburg and Beijing, via Kazakhstan, by car, motorbike, four-wheeler or truck, in seventeen days. The participants will pass through a wide range of terrain in locations that have only recently opened to the outside world.

The Russian leg of the race is divided into five sections that consist of shorter stages that pass through the country's forests, mountains and plains, before ending in the Ural. In Kazakhstan the race will be divided into four legs, most of which pass through vast plains, while others traverse the country's mountaineous regions.

The last part of the race in China will take seven days to complete, starts from Tacheng on the Sino-Kazakh border. In Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang province, the competitors will have one day of rest before the start of the Chinese leg of the race. From there, the rally will continue over the sand dunes in the east of the country to Inner Mongolia all the way to the finish line in Beijing.

The Transorientale Rally will feature a whole new concept of relays, where one vehicle can be driven by several people, one leg of the journey at a time. This option allows for a much greater number of participants, which helps divide the entry costs. In addition, there other race categories like the Regularity Rally-Raid and Discovery Rally-Raid, the first one of which requires drivers to maintain a certain average speed, while the second one has been created to serve as a sort of an initiation to endurance car racing. The Discovery Raid, which is open to all types of road vehicles, passes along asphalt roads and all vehicles are equipped with tracking boxes which will help ensure the safety of the participants. Ranking is based on every team's capacity to find the correct route and the designated destinations.

All these characteristics, as well as René Metge's ideology based on promoting discovery and exchanges between different cultures, come together in June to make this rally one of the most important motor sporting events of 2008.

More information:
http://www.transorientale.com/