Dakar Rally: KAMAZ-master Increases Gap to IVECO

Erik Khairulllin, press attaché of KAMAZ-master, reports from San Juan (Argentina):

- The cancellation of the stage Salta - Chilecito was to give a timeout to the participants of the Dakar rally, in order to get to the miners' town of Chilecito and make the necessary repairs and maintenance of machines after the marathon stage La Paz - Uyuni - Salta. Given the length of the liaison to Chilecito, 675 kilometers, assistance teams had to operate under time pressure, especially as many racers reached Salta only by the morning on January 11 because of the landslide and huge traffic jams.

One would think that as soon as people have adapted to the high mountains of the Bolivian Altiplano, a descent fr om it led to, perhaps, even worse conditions - the intense heat of the foothills of the Andes up to 50 degrees Celsius became a new challenge.

The tenth scratch of Dakar along the route Chilecito - San Juan 538 km long separatred with a neutral zone became a platform of a perhaps decicive struggle in the truck category of the race. It should be recalled that after nine days of the marathon three leading crews of Dmitry Sotnikov, Eduard Nikolaev and Gerard de Rooy top the table with minimal time intervals.   

The “trial” stage, how the race officials called it, abounded with dried-up beds of mountain rivers and hills, and the second was full of curvy roads, narrow ravines and cliffs. The massed start made the track even tighter. On straight roads trucks caught up cars, and on mountainous serpentines cars were faster and tried to return their positions. Sharp stones and rough bushes lied along the whole route. Crews of Eduard Nikolaev and Dmitry Sotnikov had to change wheels due to the lateral side cuts. Fortunately it didn’t impact their stage timing. After the first part of the special both crews managed to get to the neutralization zone, pumping the wheels. Then Dmitry Sotnikov could reach the finish line with one more cut in the front left tire. The stable result showed the crew of Airat Mardeev. His co-pilot Aidar Belyaev told they had to solve a lot of navigation tasks. Twice they met Gerard De Rooy (IVECO), who was trying to find control points. The gap between him and the stage leader Eduard Nikolaev increased to 23 minutes 43 seconds. Thus, now both KAMAZ-crews (Eduard Nikolaev and Dmitry Sotnikov take first and second positions in the general standings respectively) have quite a comfortable margin of time for the rest 2 stages of the race.

Heroes of the stage Uyuni-Salta, the crew of Anton Shibalov (as a reminder, they helped to pull out the truck of Airat Mardeev from the mud) was not so lucky today. The guys have to be a fast assistance, drive heavy spare parts and start after the top of the truck category. Today after the massive start they were in the “crowd” of fell behind cars and trucks, surrounded with the wheel prints of the faster contestants, which complicated reading of the road book as well. The pipe of the cooling system blew out and added even more problems to the crew. After the repair, it turned out that the water they had wasn’t enough. Fortunately, a Russian contestant Ravil Maganov (UTV, No 378) passed them by and shared with drinking water with them. By the way, Ravil took the second position today in his category.

Eduard Nikolaev, pilot of crew No505, “A real Dakar started today. The first part was trial. It was an interesting and various section, that you can meet on the Silk Way Rally, on the Russian Championship and Dakar used to have a lot of such sections as well. I think today physically fit contestants will perform well. We tried to drive fast and not to break the truck.”

Igor Leonov, mechanic of crew No 513, “We had some job today. 125-amp fuse blew out, I changed it while we were driving. On the neutralization zone we had to change a broken high-pressure fuel pipe, the fuel was running down to the ground. As for the rest, everything was Ok, the truck performed well”.

Dmitry Sotnikov, pilot of crew No 513, “The stage was challenging, a real marathon special and there haven’t been such stony stages for ages.  It reminds Morocco, somewh ere Chile. We tried to drive fast but save the wheels. We faced with a quite difficult navigation, in some canyons race vehicles were just driving in different directions. We puzzled it out rather quickly, it took us not so much time, and we managed to choose the correct direction in two hard places. We tried to perform well till the very finish. We saw Van Den Brink. We caught him up on the first section already, but nearly 30 km before the finish he stopped to change a wheel. However, we cut our wheel too, but could keep pumping it till the finish.

Anton Shibalov, pilot of crew No 515, “I have a lot of questions to the road book. And I am not the only one. The reference to dried-up river beds, when there are hundreds of them around you, is very uncertain. It is a navigation, not a lottery. In spite of everything we try to be as fast as possible in our situation. We function as a fast assistance and carry spare parts. We understand that it is an important role for the whole team”.

Today is Friday the 13th, and the drivers of Dakar-2017 will have the 11th, penultimate stage from San Juan to Rio Cuarto. The total length of the stage is 754 km, including 288 km of SS. Dunes in San Juan on the first 50 km of the special stage will be the last dunes on the route of the rally Dakar-2017, as promised by the organizers. And after them, the drivers will pass sections in the style of classic rallies - speedy roads challenging for pilots rather than for navigators. But we all know that surprises are possible at any time. In fact, this stage will be a decisive for distribution of seats on the podium, because this is the last chance to win back de Rooy in the overall standings - tomorrow, the final special stage to Buenos Aires will be only 64 kilometers

DAKAR-2017. TRUCK CATEGORY. RESULTS OF THE 10TH STAGE.  

DAKAR-2017. TRUCK CATEGORY. GENERAL CLASSIFICATION АFTER THE 10TH STAGE.