Congratulations to world record chaser Rainer Zietlow, who has added another title to his collection by driving non-stop CapetoCape across 19 countries in a VW Touareg, in just nine days!
Throughout the 19,000km challenge Rainer and his teammates, Marius Biela and Sam Roach, have been able to share the adventure thanks to Inmarsat’s satellite connectivity.
A vehicular mounted antenna from partner Cobham SATCOM, gave the team access to the Inmarsat BGAN service so that they always had reliable comms-on-the-move, to enable them to post daily blogs and stunning photos to the challenge website, as well as update social media in real-time.
The Touareg Cape to Cape 2.0 Challenge vehicle in action
The Touareg V6 TDI was also fitted with Inmarsat IsatData Pro – a two-way messaging service for M2M communications – which monitored and tracked the car along the route, sending back positional data to a tracking map for fans, every five minutes.
“Intel, Hewlett Packard and Inmarsat together provided us with 100% reliable in-car communications solutions in even the remotest parts of our route, and effectively turned the Touareg into a rolling innovation centre, allowing us to keep in touch with the outside world 24/7,” said Sam Roach, videographer and blogger for the Touareg CapetoCape challenge.
The team arrived in the Northern-most point of Norway, Norkapp, on Sunday 20 September at 14:00, having begun their journey from Cape Agulhas, the southern-most tip of Africa.
The route took the team over extremely challenging road conditions as well as political conditions – passing through Africa and around the edges of the Middle East – the only time they left the road was to take a flight over Syria.
“We are happy that we can now end our CapetoCape project with this amazing time of nine days, four hours,” said Rainer.
“I am very proud that our route took us on the maximum possible driving distance, keeping our permitted flight over Syria to the absolute minimum possible distance. That’s really important for me to know that we completed every possible km driving on the ground.”
Driving in five hour shifts non-stop over nine days has taken its toll on the team who were looking forward to a hot shower and a good night’s sleep – in a bed, not a car!
The Cape to Cape team celebrating the completion of their epic journey
