Yesterday, Stage 9 was to pass between Bolivian Tupiza and Argentinian Salta at Dakar, but due to heavy rains the organizers cancelled it. The race will continue today with the tenth special stage 373 km long which will bring the racers to Argentinian Belén.
Before the start of the race we already told about KAMAZ-master's rivals at this Dakar, namely about MAZ-SPORTauto. How are they doing now, halfway to the finish? The Belarusian racers hardly finished the eighth special of the 2018 Dakar Rally Raid having lost time to the main competitors. In the general classification, leader of MAZ-SPORTauto Siarhei Viazovich lost third place, but stayed in the top four of the strongest crews. By the way, Anton Shibalov's truck came to the aid of the Belarusian truck at the race.
"The marathon stage went awful for the team. On the first day, Aliaksei Vishneuski's and Aleksandr Vasilevski's crews faced problems. The former had a compressor failure, the latter got into a mud hole seriously damaging the truck 90 km before the finish. At Stage 8, Siarhei Viazovich's MAZ sank in a muddy riverbed," told velcom, the company providing the Belarusians with mobile communication at the Dakar. According to Siarhei Viazovich himself, "it was Artur Ardavichus who tried to help us, but he failed. We were surprised and thankful beyond measure, when Anton Shibalov pulled us out, which took him about 15-20 minutes. If it were not for him, we would wait for our guys for a very long time, given their position in the daily starting list. We are fighting with other crews of KAMAZ-master, but it was big of Shibalov's crew not to leave us high and dry, driving by. The respectworthy team is playing fair on the track, and, even if they want to win, for instance, from us, they want to do it in a fair contest, and for this we are grateful to them!
Being all nerves, I made a decision that turned out to be false – to get to the finish on a punched wheel. After five kilometers, the wheel broke and knocked down power steering pipes. Three or four kilometers before the finish, we stopped in order to start replacing the wheel and restore power steering. It's a pity," quotes Viazovich the press service of G-Energy.
As a result, Siarhei Viazovich finished Stage 8 14th, having covered the high-speed section for 5 hours 42 minutes, and now lags behind the racing leader – Russian Eduard Nikolaev – for almost 4 hours.
Aliaksei Vishneuski finished 13th, having spent 5 hours 25 minutes on the track and lost more than an hour to the winner. In the general classification, the crew is on 17th place and loses more than 36 hours to the leaders.
It was difficult to race for Aleksandr Vasilevski's MAZ which scored 22th time too. It took him about 7 hours to cover the route, and a lag made 2 hours 35 minutes. In the general classification, the crew is on 15th place and loses about 19 hours to the marathon leader.