Apollo RFN’s Zakir Yakfu Fights Back to Win Taklimakan Rally Motorcycle Title

The China Taklimakan Rally, one of the most demanding cross-country rally competitions in Asia, concluded with a defining moment for the Apollo RFN team. Zakir Yakfu, aboard his KTM for Apollo RFN, claimed the overall championship of the motorcycle category — a victory earned not through fortune, but through resilience.

The Taklimakan Rally draws competitors from across China and beyond, with over 140 vehicles and riders taking on the unforgiving terrain of the Taklamakan Desert across multiple special stages. Among the motorcycle field, Zakir entered as the event’s most decorated rider, having accumulated more stage victories — Golden Helmets — than any other competitor in recent editions. But rally racing has no script.

In the early stages, it was Abbas Japar who set the pace. The Xinjiang Bayi Steel rider rode with precision and aggression, pulling ahead and applying pressure to the entire field. Zakir, carrying the expectations of the Apollo RFN team, found himself trailing. In rally racing, margins are everything.

He didn’t complain. He let his riding do the talking.

Stage by stage, Zakir gritted his teeth and chipped away at the deficit. The desert punishes any lapse in concentration — but his years of experience on this terrain showed. He navigated the most technical sections with a controlled aggression that carried him back from the edge and closed the gap to a razor-thin margin.

All remaining suspense was compressed into the final stages. Then, with the finish in sight, he made his move — reclaiming the lead and holding it through the final special stage to claim the top of the podium as the overall motorcycle champion.

For Apollo RFN, the victory is a validation of the team’s approach to machine development — motorcycles tuned for the specific demands of desert rally racing, where reliability and outright performance must coexist across hundreds of kilometers of brutal terrain. At Apollo, every competition is a laboratory. The lessons learned from riders like Zakir Yakfu feed directly back into the engineering cycle. Racing is not a showroom exercise. It is a proving ground.

Zakir Yakfu’s Taklimakan title is, above all, a testament to the human element at the heart of motorsport: the will to push forward when the desert pushes back.