The organisers of the Asia Cross Country Rally 2024 (AXCR 2024) in August recently announced that the event will not be run in Malaysia. The AXCR, which used to be run in Malaysia as well, was to have ended in Kuala Lumpur for the first time after a 20-year lapse. Past events have seen the AXCR route passing through Laos in an attempt to live up to the ‘cross country’ name.
‘Safety reasons’ are mentioned in its short notice and these presumably refer to the recent developments in southern Thailand. The ongoing conflict in the region has seen growing violence in recent times with a bomb blast in Narathiwat injuring two Malaysian tourists last week.
The conditions would therefore be risky for the participants travelling through the region and the organisers have rightly taken the decision to start and end the event in Thailand. The starting point will be at Surat Thani, 360 kms from the Malaysia-Thai border, on August 11 and the route, which will have 6 legs, will go northwards to end at Kanchanaburi after 7 days of rallying.
Major teams taking part this year include the TOYOTA GAZOO Racing Team THAILAND which will use the new Hilux GR Sport, as well as Team Mitsubishi Ralliart which will also have the new Triton.
A Malaysian team has also been entered for AXCR 2024 and is made up of Karamjit Singh (aka ‘The Flying Sikh’) and Saladin Mazlan, both rally veterans, with Leona Chin also part of the team. Hopefully, they will be able to get to the starting point safely to take part.
Incidentally, it was also security concerns that led to the organisers of the Paris-Dakar Rally moving the event to South America. The 2008 event had to be cancelled after French tourist were killed by terrorists in Mauritania which was along the route, and the organisers switched locations in 2009. Since 2020, the Dakar Rally has been run in Saudi Arabia.