For four days, the city of Tacheng, located in the extreme West of China, fifteen kilometers away from Kazakhstan’s border, has welcomed the start of 2016 Taklimakan Rally.
105 cars and 31 bikes have overcome without trouble the traditional administratives and technicals scrutineerings organized in the racetrack of the city. After these simple formalities, competitors will now get to the heart of the matter with the cross of Taklimakan desert, one of the largest and driest desert on earth.  
The arrival will take place May 29th at Aksu after two weeks of competition and more than 4500 kilometers covered in unknown territories.
Han Wei and Jean-Pierre Garcin, with their new two wheel-drive buggy of Han Wei Motorsport Team, developed by the crew of Philippe Gache in their workshop of Fréjus, will likely play an important part.  Philippe Gache will test himself the abilities of his new car. He will indeed compete Taklimakan Rally on board of a second buggy with Stéphane Prévot, cross-country beginner.
Marco Piana, with Steven Griener as copilot, will complete the european contingent of car category. Familiar with F.I.A. Cross-Country World Cup, the team leader of Xtreme Plus will discover for the first time the taklimakan desert with a T2 Toyota.
Han Wei Motorsport Team will have a lot to do facing well-prepared chinese competitors. Two Nissan M05, supervised by Dessoude Team and driven by Ma Miao and Fan Fan, will try to play their cards right. Kun Liu and Pan Hongyu of Luhang Panda Team, both famous in China for their skills in driving and navigation, will probably give the two yellow buggys of Han Wei and Philippe Gache a hard time.
In bike category, Willy Jobard and Thierry Traccan, both riding a KTM, will be two riders to follow for the overall classification. Even though the Spanish Armand Monleón, tenth of the 2016 Dakar Rally, will be the favourite to win Taklimakan rally with his KTM 450 Replica, the Chinese Wen Min Su, winner last year, will do his best to keep his victory with his Jincheng.
Competition will really start tomorrow, Sunday May 15th. A prologue of 13 kilometers, close to the bivouac of Tacheng, will indicate the starting orders of the first stage.
2016 Taklimakan Rally has the support of Hunan TV. Two helicopters and 200 hundred people will be in charge of the TV production and the daily broadcasting of a thirty minutes TV show. This major support of one of the biggest chinese TV Group ensures to 2016 Taklimakan Rally a daily average audience rating between 80 and 100 millions TV viewers.  

Press: TAKLIMAKAN RALLY