Barreda and Metge make first appearance in the China Grand Rally

Team HRC’s Joan Barreda and Michael Metge are poised to get their first taste of the third edition of the China Grand Rally which gets underway tomorrow.

 With less than a hundred days to go until the 2017 Dakar Rally – off road season’s blue riband event – Team HRC are continuing with the preparations of its riders and the Honda CRF450 RALLY. This time around, it will be Spaniard Joan Barreda and Frenchman Michael Metge who make their maiden trips to the Far East. The two riders have their sights set on an otherwise unknown China Grand Rally – a longer rally with greater mileage than those of the FIM Cross Country Rallies World Championship. The race will mark the Asian debut for both Team HRC members.

Barreda and Metge will be back in action in China for the first time since the exhaustive training programme of August which saw the pair do battle with American deserts, a session culminating with victory in the legendary Vegas to Reno race. The China Grand Rally will be the final date before the Spanish and French riders head out to South America at the end of December.

 The nine-day rally takes place in the northern provinces of China, kicking off in the city of Baotou in the Chinese region of Inner Mongolia. Riders can look forward to sand and loose gravel as well as the great Mongolian dunes and their high level of navigation demands. The competitors will have to tackle almost four thousand kilometres including 1,650 km against the clock and more than 2,300 kilometres of liaison sections. The longest special stage of the event will be the 304 kilometre fifth stage. The race concludes in Zuo Qi on October 3.