A 21-inch motocross bike tire is rolling wild down a massive sand dune in Argentina’s Fiambalá Desert. The drone is struggling to keep up, weaving through the air to catch every bounce and tumble. This is the Tuk South team’s attempt to break the world record for the longest tire roll, adventure, physics and spectacle.
Fiambalá is a region in northwest Argentina that feels like another world. Its dunes, some of the steepest on the planet, rise like mountains of fine sand carved by the wind. The Tuk South team, a gang of thrill-seekers famous for their three-wheeled tuk-tuk ride from Chile to Argentina, chose this strange landscape for their record attempt.
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The tire, a narrow dirt bike variant, was chosen for its light weight and ability to grip sand without sinking too deep. At 53cm across it’s not the huge truck tire you would expect but a speed and distance challenger. Launched from the top of the dune it rockets down, 12mph in the first 20 seconds and 350 feet.
Fiambalá’s dunes are brutal, even the most experienced adventurers will struggle with the sand shifting beneath their feet and the steep inclines. The Tuk South team, fresh off their cross-border tuk-tuk expedition, brought a fearless energy to the task. Their YouTube channel describes the desert as “one of the best on Earth” and compares its barren beauty to the surface of Mars.
Without embedded sensors or GPS trackers the team relied on the drone’s footage and some maths. Reddit users broke it down: if the tire maintained an average speed of 17.5 feet per second over its 171 second journey it could have covered 3,000 feet. But the terrain wasn’t kind. The tire’s speed likely dropped as it hit softer patches or veered off course, slowing by 0.1 feet per second.
Guinness World Records haven’t confirmed it yet and the tire roll category is a small one compared to records like most people rolling tires at the same time (323 in Japan in 2015) or the farthest tire flip in 24 hours. But this feels more primal, a test of endurance against nature rather than a group effort. Other tire related records – like flipping a 926 pound tire or throwing one 39 feet – are about human strength but this one is about letting go and trusting the elements.
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