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CROSS COUNTRY RALLYING
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All terrain tyres, Rally tyre, CROSS COUNTRY RALLYING - BFGoodrich spirit
CROSS COUNTRY RALLYING
A STORY OF CHAMPIONS
No other mechanized sport discipline has as many champions as All-Terrain Rallying. Champions from all sorts of backgrounds.
It sometimes takes more than two hours to travel thirty kilometers (19 miles), as in the case of the fifth stage of the 2007 Por Las Pampas Rally. All-Terrain Rallies are full of dune stories, each one more incredible than the next, like the one that happened on the last Dakar when Carlos Souza lost his co-driver Andrea Schultz right in the middle of the Sahara desert. The latter got out to dig the VW Race Touareg/BFGoodrich out of the sand.
When it was freed, the car became immobilized a few hundred meters farther on, buried in the sandstorm. Several anxious hours passed before the two team-mates found each other.
DID YOU KNOW ?
The BFGoodrich Rock T/A tyre with which the official teams and most of the "private" teams in All-Terrain Rallying are equipped is capable of withstanding impacts of close to three tons, running at high speed on rock-strewn tracks, conquering chains of dunes or enduring several hundred miles of special stage provided that the inflation pressure is correctly controlled by the crew.
THE BIVOUAC
In All-Terrain Rallying, the service area is called a bivouac, a rudimentary camp site which, according to the ethnologists, existed 200,000 years ago. This is where the crews get their strength back over a good meal before shutting themselves in their tents. This where the mechanics work on the automobiles worn out by hours of bush driving and the BFGoodrich technicians analyze the tyres worn by miles of plowed-up tracks. This gigantic, noisy, multicolored camp called the bivouac is set up each evening in a different stage-town, at sites full of history, some listed as Unesco world heritage sites, like Valparaiso, in Chile, with its 44 hills forming a natural amphitheater, Tan Tan, in Morocco, crossroads for nomadic tribes of the Sahara, Zouerat, in Mauritania, with the longest train in the world loaded with iron ore.
DID YOU KNOW ?
BFGoodrich Long-distance Rally tyres must combine two properties: versatility and endurance.
- Versatility because in many competitions such as the Dakar, the teams must select a single type of tyre for the whole course. Therefore these tyres must tackle not only stony tracks but also sand dunes.
- Endurance because tyres like the Rock T/A must travel several hundred miles at high speed.
DID YOU KNOW ?
The BFGoodrich Rock T/A tyre with which the official teams and most of the "private" teams in All-Terrain Rallying are equipped is capable of withstanding impacts of close to three tons, running at high speed on rock-strewn tracks, conquering chains of dunes or enduring several hundred miles of special stage provided that the inflation pressure is correctly controlled by the crew.
THE BIVOUAC
In All-Terrain Rallying, the service area is called a bivouac, a rudimentary camp site which, according to the ethnologists, existed 200,000 years ago. This is where the crews get their strength back over a good meal before shutting themselves in their tents. This where the mechanics work on the automobiles worn out by hours of bush driving and the BFGoodrich technicians analyze the tyres worn by miles of plowed-up tracks. This gigantic, noisy, multicolored camp called the bivouac is set up each evening in a different stage-town, at sites full of history, some listed as Unesco world heritage sites, like Valparaiso, in Chile, with its 44 hills forming a natural amphitheater, Tan Tan, in Morocco, crossroads for nomadic tribes of the Sahara, Zouerat, in Mauritania, with the longest train in the world loaded with iron ore.
DID YOU KNOW ?
- Versatility because in many competitions such as the Dakar, the teams must select a single type of tyre for the whole course. Therefore these tyres must tackle not only stony tracks but also sand dunes.
- Endurance because tyres like the Rock T/A must travel several hundred miles at high speed.
- Carlos Sainz and Ari Vatanen were crowned World Rally Champions before winning on the Cross CountryRally trails.
- Jean-Louis Schlesser had his moments of glory in the World Championship for Sports Prototypes before he tried the desert.
- Stéphane Peterhansel, "Monsieur" Dakar with 9 victories, was formerly Skateboard Champion of Europe, then double Enduro World Champion before changing to four wheels.
- Among the current all-Terrain elite, the South African Giniel de Villiers is just about the only one who has spent his whole career in this discipline and is still waiting for his first success in the most fantastic race in the world, the Dakar Rally.
THE DUNES
On which All-Terrain Rally course are the most beautiful dunes found? On the Dakar Rally, in the western Sahara between Atar and Tichit? On the Por las Pampas Rally, in the Atacama, the driest desert in the world? In Tunisia, near Matmata, or in the United Arab Emirates between Abu Dhabi and Dubai? Strings of dunes, a destination very much in vogue for tourists in search of adventure; a nightmare for drivers lost in a sea of sand, those interminable crescent-shaped shifting dunes, those endless ergs…
So that the stories of dunes do not become your swansong, you must follow a few vital rules, starting with deflating your tyres to increase the area of contact with the ground.
The most experienced drivers "read" the dunes. They know how to determine the shape - straight line, half-moon, parabola or rhourd - to trace their route over the firm sand without stopping before they reach the sif, the top part of the dune. Once up there, slowing down is out of the question, but take advantage of the momentum to go over the top and down the "leeward" slope, the steepest slope which sometimes springs a few unpleasant surprises.
