Dakar Rally, Haval Ranked First Among Chinese Racing Teams

The harshest rally around the world – “2011 Dakar Rally” drew to an end on January 16th of Beijing Time after 16 days’ fierce competition among racers. Well-known racer Zhou Yong competed with international-famous racers by driving HAVAL SUV and went through all kinds of difficulties and obstacles. Finally he beat various powerful rivals and left many multinational famous brands behind and ultimately ranked 22nd, winning the first among Chinese racing teams which took part in this Rally.
 
During the whole process of the Rally, HAVAL racing team has achieved excellent performance, ranking 12th, 13th and 15th successively at stages which hit records among Chinese racers.
 
The performance achieved by HAVAL not only enchanted Chinese car fans, but also attracted the attention of the Organizing Committee of Dakar Rally. Yannick, Chairman of Dakar Rally Committee and a FIA official, not only expressed his satisfaction of the performance of racers, but specially acquainted himself with the production of Great Wall HAVAL and its sales around the world. Yannick pointed out that China’s self-owned autos could participate in Dakar Rally and obtained such good performance, which obviously demonstrated both the maturity of the racers and the rapid development of technologies made by the manufacturer.
 
For this Rally, Great Wall Motors not only dispatched three maintenance autos to guarantee the competition, but also arranged two autos branded HAVAL SUV and Wingle Pickup of the complete mass production batch as those entering the Rally for media interview and as the working cars of the racing team. Great Wall Motors aims to take Dakar Rally as the proving ground for testing and improving its mass production auto models currently available in the market.
 
Background Link: the course of 2011 Dakar Rally went through Argentina and Chile and racers had to climb the longest mountains in the world, surmount the highest volcano, go across the driest desert, climb over the existing highest dune, including the Andes, Atacama Desert and other extremely poor road conditions, which was really a great challenge to racers and racing cars as well. The whole course of Dakar Rally was approximately 10,000 kilometers long with the special stages stretching around 6000 kilometers lasting 16 days. This is the second time for Zhou Yong to participate in Dakar Rally by driving a racing car of Chinese self-owned brand HAVAL.