Speculating on the gap between Bariloche, Argentina and Malaysia/Singapore: There were probable sightings in both Asuncion, Paraguay and Sao Paulo, Brazil. None of those cities, Bariloche, Asuncion and Sao Paulo, are far from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Checking on Buenos Aires Ezeiza Airport (EZE) I found out Malaysia Airlines (MAS/MH) flies from there to Kuala Lumpur (KUL), Malaysia and even offers a connecting flight to Kota Kinabalu (BKI) from EZE on Wednesdays and Sundays. As teams were previously surprised with a Bolivia-New Zealand leg, this one seems like a more exotic one. Lets suppose they were in either Asuncion/Sao Paulo/Buenos Aires and then were asked to go to Kota Kinabalu! Easy: Malaysia Airlines flight MH202 departed EZE at a very confy time: 21:45 on Wednesday December 9th and after stopping in Cape Town & Johannesburg (both in South Africa) they arrived in KUL at 06:20 on December 11th just in time to connect with flght MH2604 departing KUL at 07:30 arriving BKI at 10:05. This may have put the teams in Malaysia on December 11 early morning without any other legs having been run in either Europe or Africa.
Malaysia Airlines departed Buenos Aires on the following dates:
December Sun 06 Wed 09 Sun 13
Arrived in Kuala Lumpur:
December Tue 08 Fri 11 Tue 15
Malaysia Airlines
Buenos Aires (EZE) To Kuala Lumpur (KUL)
Wed & Sun 21:45 06:20+2days MH202 Boeing 747-400 2 STOPS
Yuck. I certainly hope they wouldn't do that. That would be an even shorter course than TAR 15!
But if Macaroons has the right info (5 continents), I am rejoicing right now.
I would speculate that it went like this:
North America (Starting Line)
South America
Europe
Africa
Asia (Singapore area)
North America
But I REALLY want to see Oceania visited again!
We all love 6-continent races.
However, I doubt it happened this season.
I wouldn't be surprised if Oceania wasn't visited this season. Let's look at continent/regional visits season-wise.
Asia: all of them
Europe: all of them except 2
Africa: 1-3, 5-7, 10-12, hopefully 16
Middle East: 5,9,15 (bit sparse here)
South America: 2,5,7,9,11,13,16 (about every other season)
Oceania: 2,4,5,9,13 (so the next visit should be due in 17)
North America besides USA: 3,5,7,8 (yeah that sucks huh?)
As you can see TAR follows a pattern if we ignore the routes of 14-15.
Let's go even further while we're at it.