The second stage (Swan Lake Stage) of the 2014 China Cross-Country Rally (CGR) and the FIA World Cup Cross-Country Rally alternate event kicked off on the 2nd of this month. Chen Haoyun and Yuan Guojie from Zhanjiang Zongheng Dadi Team encountered various incidents during the race, including a tire puncture and rescuing a teammate, and ultimately finished in 15th place overall. When Chen Haoyun learned at the finish line that his result was actually so good, he regretfully exclaimed, “If I had known, we wouldn’t have just sat around chatting in the track.”
Chen Haoyun from Zhanjiang Zongheng Dadi Team drives in close combat with an opponent in the desert. Photo by Zhang Qianli
In the first stage, due to repeated getting stuck in the sand, digging out, and rescuing a teammate, Chen Haoyun failed to reach the finish line before the cut-off time. It’s actually both laughable and pitiful—turns out the navigator was so mesmerized by someone else’s Dakar-spec luxury car that they forgot their own start time. “Mainly, when we were setting off in the morning, the navigator went ahead to hand in the timing card but got so engrossed watching others start that they delayed our own start time. After starting late, I wasn’t in a good mood. Before even beginning the first stage, we were hit with a 10-minute penalty, which really threw off my rhythm. I kept getting stuck in the sand. Thankfully, his desert experience is quite solid, which helped us a lot for the rest of the race.”
By the start of the second stage, the navigator Yuan Guojie had learned a lesson and stopped looking at others, focusing only on doing his job. Although there was no time penalty this time, they still faced constant trouble due to tire pressure choices: “Today we had a tire puncture and had to stop to change the tire. Earlier, when we set off in the morning, we set the tire pressure a bit too high, considering that it had rained heavily the day before and the desert might be harder. But since our starting position was quite far back, by the time we entered the desert, we found it was actually still very dry, with soft sand, plus the large vehicles ahead had dug deep tracks, making it tough to drive.”
After facing such major issues, Chen Haoyun expected the results for the 2nd to be poor, so his spirits weren’t particularly high. But what he didn’t know was that by then, he had already climbed to around the top 10 in the stage standings, and those he had overtaken didn’t even know where they’d stopped. “Afterward, we adjusted the tire pressure, maybe letting it down a bit too much, and ended up with another puncture, forcing another stop to change the tire. Today there was also a third stop, when we saw our teammate Jiang Yaohuan’s car break down in the track, so we stopped to see if we could help. Jiang Yaohuan’s car seemed to have an issue with the throttle—it wouldn’t accelerate. After we stopped to help, we managed to fix it, and the outcome was pretty good; we actually were able to help.”
After helping Jiang Yaohuan fix the car, they also chatted for a while in the track about their experiences in the China Cross-Country Rally. According to the internal rules of Zongheng Dadi Team, this time Chen Haoyun had overtaken Jiang Yaohuan, winning 5 yuan right off the bat, plus another 5 yuan for rescuing his teammate. Clear accounts make for close friends—the two happily settled the score before Chen Haoyun happily drove on toward the finish line. Meanwhile, at the finish line, a reporter heard Wang Xiang, who arrived three places ahead of him, say: “Chen Haoyun? He was sitting around chatting in the track with Jiang Yaohuan, as if they weren’t in any hurry at all.”
In the end, when Chen Haoyun found out he had finished 15th in the second stage, he regretted it deeply—if only he hadn’t wasted that half hour, he would have been the 10th for the day and even ranked ahead of China’s racing king Lu Ningjun. What an honor that would have been. Amidst the regrets, Chen Haoyun summed up: “Today we set the tire pressure too low, which also had something to do with digging out sand yesterday. We dug out the sand over ten times yesterday, which delayed us a fair bit. So today, thinking that the overall standings were hopeless anyway, we didn’t go all out in the race. Now I know I regret it—I’ll give it my all in tomorrow’s gravel stage.”
Unfortunately, the third stage is only a little over 40 kilometers long. If Chen Haoyun wants to make a truly standout performance, he’ll have to wait a couple more days.