Five-times Le Mans 24 Hour winner Emanuele Pirro beat reigning Dakar Rally champion Giniel de Villiers in the final of the ROC Beijing Challenge on the opening day of The Race of Champions in the Bird?s Nest Stadium in Beijing on Monday.

ROC China kicked off three days of action in the magnificent stadium built for the Beijing Olympic Games, with The ROC Nations Cup on Tuesday and The Race of Champions on Wednesday.

A1GP racer and ex-Williams F1 test driver Dong He Bin was crowned the inaugural ROC China champion after beating novelist and rally driver Han Han in Monday?s other final. The two will team up in Tuesday's ROC Nations Cup.

De Villiers, the first South African to be invited to participate in the prestigious annual event, reached Monday?s final by beating twice world rally champion Marcus Gronholm in the semi-final.

"Racing inside the Bird's Nest Stadium was an awesome experience," said the 37-year-old from Stellenbosch. "This is my first visit to China and I'm really enjoying myself. The people are very friendly and there is a lot of enthusiasm for the racing."

De Villiers, who won the Dakar Rally in Argentina and Chile in January in a Volkswagen Race Touareg, will team up with former F1 race winner David Coulthard in Tuesday's The ROC Nations Cup competition and will compete as the All Stars against the likes of seven-times F1 World Champion Michael Schumacher representing Germany, newly-crowned F1 World Champion Jenson Button of Great Britain and eight-times Le Mans 24 Hour winner Tom Kristensen of Scandinavia.

Coulthard will be a formidable team-mate to the South African. The Scot, 13 times an F1 grand prix winner and now an F1 commentator with the BBC, was runner-up to world rally champion Sebastian Loeb in the 2008 Race of Champions at Wembley Stadium in England.