介绍:
About an hour drive away from Shanghai, into the neighbouring town of Taicang, you will find the XDL Off road motor-crossing park. Xin-Dong Li (XDL) is China's one and only professional Off Road Park dedicated to providing an exciting and safe off road experience for motor racing enthusiasts. Thanks to it's five locations across China, Motor crossing is quickly growing in popularity among residents.
Led by an American racing professional Tommy Patton and businessman John Zhang, the two co-owners have also ensured the Park has a team of highly trained staff and technicians to help out visitors.
The two racing enthusiasts teamed up to set up this magnificent racetrack almost 3 years ago. John talks about the reception the racing track has received both among the locals and the expat community since its establishment.
"The first year all the Chinese people were questioning if it was dangerous. The second year they would say, ' I don't want to make myself dirty' But you know Taicang is very close to Shanghai and we have so many foreigners living in there. And they understand the sport. In fact in the beginning, they payed us to make the tracks muddier. After that, the local people saw that and thought 'that' it actually is fun!"he says
According to the company's website the park is estimated to be about 245 acres big with one motor crossing track and one SUV / ATV racing and training track.
The former has a length of about 1000 meters while the latter, a utility track, is about 1500 meters long. It includes a motor race track, Sand pit and trails, as well as an off road training and Racing track.
"We have two locations at the XDL park. One is in the Zheng He park that's our main track and the other location is 3 kilometres away which is our sand land." Says John
On these tracks you can put your off road crawling techniques to test on a dirt and rock course that has steep inclines, mud pits, log obstacles, a boulder field and more. It's a bit of a scary ride if you'rent used to it, but I guess that's where the thrill lies.
A lot can be done on the sand and trails courses with sand dunes and flat runs that simulate desert conditions. Besides that there are also several twisting trails snaking through the woods and mud holes. Due to the size of the park, I wondered what would happened if someone got lost or stuck in the middle of nowhere?
"We have a team so people driving within are not allowed to drive on their own. We have so many security guys to control movement"
John says, this is the perfect place to optimize SUV off road setup.
Apart from this one, there are four other racing tracks across the country and many more yet to come, including one in Beijing. Myself, I can't wait for that one to arrive!
One thing we have to note is that, this is a really huge park. The local government here has supposedly invested in promoting this sporting activity to boost tourism for the local area as well as utilise idle land. As a tourist, it's a good, fun place to start when touring the area.
According to John, on a busy day, the park is filled with hundreds of racing fanatics.
Unfortunately when I visited it was a rainy day, so most regulars had chosen to stay away. Nevertheless, there was a good number of those who weren't deterred by the weather conditions.And of course most of them were foreigners.
Fun here doesn't only come by racing cars but the fact that you get to mud up yourself in a fun way. (Remember when you were a child?) Yeah, that Kind of fun. Well, at least for those who loved playing in mud on a beautiful rainy day.
The stunts that can be done at this motor-crossing park are also pretty incredible. And indeed this is a nice place to escape to with friends, especially if you are a racing fan and an adrenaline junkie.
Anyway, have a new setup that you want to test out or simply want to practice your off
roading technique, XDL has the perfect course for you to do all of that. Thanks to John and Tommy, a team of well trained staff and technicians are prepared to help you get the most fun out of the experience.
But if you're new to off roading, don't worry the team here is ready to take care of you and take you to the next level. So go try it out, it'll be fun!
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