Motorsports booming in China

alxa youqi — Trailing enormous plumes of dust, the Silk Way rally cars tore through the Gobi Desert bound for China’s Imperial city of Xi’an — fresh evidence of the Middle Kingdom’s newfound love of motorsports.

From the well-established Chinese Grand Prix to an explosion of kids’ karting events, the country which until recently relied more on the bicycle than the internal combustion engine is getting behind the wheel in a big way.

Motorsports are enjoying a boom across China, from the two-week-long Silk Way odyssey to the hundreds of local car rallies, motocross events and touring car championships that take place every year.

Just 30 years ago, such events were more or less unheard of in the fast-changing country, which now boasts the world’s second-biggest economy after the United States and a growing urban middle class with money to burn on hobbies.

“People have more and more means and free time,” said Wang Xudong, chief executive of Zhongshi Huanqiu.

“And in parallel the Chinese car market is growing.”

It is hard to believe now, so clogged with traffic are cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, but cars were still rare on Chinese streets three decades ago.

With sales of 24.38 million passenger cars last year — up 15 per cent in 12 months — China is now the world’s largest car market.

And since the watershed 2004 Chinese Grand Prix in Shanghai — now an annual fixture on the Formula One circuit — motorsports have been on turbocharge. The first Formula E race — auto racing with electric cars — in history took place before 75,000 spectators at Beijing’s Bird’s Nest Olympic stadium in 2014.

The Silk Way Rally set off on July 7 from Red Square in the heart of Moscow, travelled through Russia’s grassy steppes and the great plains and mountains of Kazakhstan before crossing the daunting Gobi.

Exhausted racers crossed the finish line on Saturday in Xi’an, some 9,599 kilometres (6,000 miles) later, with Chinese driver Han Wei coming home third in his Chinese-made Geely car.

The event — co-organised between China and Russia — has ambitions to rival the prestigious Dakar Rally. “The Chinese have a thirst for organising their own events, like what has happened in Europe, but are a few years behind, and they have really become fans of discovery and adventure,” Hubert Auriol, former director of the Dakar Rally, told AFP. —