Press attaché of KAMAZ-master reports fr om the Stage 6 finish of Silk Way Rally:
– “Fast speedy section” – that’s how the last stage was described by most of the participants. Long steppe areas, narrow bridges, due to which the participants had to drive through the river beds, sharp stones were the main challenges on the route awaiting the sportsmen.
Stephane Peterhansel was the best in the car category, nobody could come closer than 15 minutes to his result. A big gap achieved on previous sections helps Sebastien Loeb to lead the standings, though he finished second today. Cyril Despres also keeps his position in the overall, though he finished 9th on the stage, being 29 minutes and 53 seconds off the pace. After 6 stages Bryce Menzies remains third in the overall. By the way, it is the very sportsman Anton Shibalov’s crew pulled out of the ravine.
The crew of Eduard Nikolaev, Evgeny Yakovlev and Vladimir Rybakov got their first and KAMAZ-master's second win in the truck category at the stage. Today they faced the same problem as Gerard de Rooy yesterday: the suspension bracket of the cab was broken. Notwithstanding a heavy shaking, the crew drove 120 km to the finish line. Facing this problem, the Dutch decided to stop his fight for the podium and used public roads to reach the finish and therefore got more than a hundred hours of penalty. The Czech Martin Kolomy could improve his position at the stage finishing only 39 seconds behind the winner. Crews of Dmitry Sotnikov, Airat Mardeev and Anton Shibalov today were on 3rd, 4th and 6th positions respectively. The top three in the overall didn’t change.
A short special of 106 km that finishes straight at the Chinese border awaits the sportsmen tomorrow. The new stage with deserts, dunes and sands will start in China. The time gap is minimal now, and everything can change many times.
Eduard Nikolaev, pilot of KAMAZ-master Team, crew No. 307: "For us one of the main targets on this rally is to test novelties before Dakar, and there are quite many of them. Notwithstanding being first today, we failed to show the time that we had wanted and been able to show. 120 km before the finish we had a breakdown connected with the very unit we are testing – it is suspension on our and on Anton Shibalov’s trucks. Fortunately, Anton Shibalov hasn’t found this defect yet, but while we were crossing a ditch, the suspension bracket of the cab broke down. Then we had to slow down and couldn’t show the result we were expecting. However, thanks God, we didn’t leave the race. Now we will make analyses, prepare and strengthen this unit for Dakar."
Aidar Belyaev, navigator of KAMAZ-master Team, crew No. 300: "It was an interesting special section. There were many fast tracks at the start, then there was a foothill with rolling tracks, risings, descents, stones. One wheel blew up due to the overheating. There were bad places in the lowland flooded with water: truck was even slumping. Those are really dangerous places which we had to travel around. In general, everything went well for us, and all in all the stage was fast, we got ahead of other participants. Now the positioning was “made”, and all are going at the same pace."
Anton Shibalov, pilot of KAMAZ-master Team, crew No. 312: "In my opinion, it wasn’t a very interesting stage, mainly there were straight roads and a bit of impassability, there were a couple of places wh ere the race officials made a by-pass route of bridges for trucks at the allowed speed of 30 kmph, and it means that it’s impossible to get it through quickly. We didn’t drive fast, tried to save our wheels.”
Martin Kolomy, pilot of Tatra Buggyra Racing Team, crew No. 311: “I liked the special: a lot of technical places, wh ere one just pushes 'the gas pedal to the floor’ and goes ahead. We didn’t have problems with navigation either. KAMAZ started before us, and we used their paths. Anyway we liked the day.”
Dmitry Sotnikov, pilot of KAMAZ-master Team, crew No. 303: “We started second today after Despres and kept very close to him. It was difficult to navigate – there was only one, not always visible path, therefore we did our own navigation. After about 50 km Loeb in his car overpassed us, and we were going after him for a while, until he made a mistake. He caught us up after about 20 km. Nobody reached us for a long time. The fight started only closer to the finish, plus we touched a stone on the 220th km, and we had to drive on pumping till the finish. It immediately became harder to drive on pumping, there was not enough air for gearing. But in general our navigator Ruslan Akhmadeev did a great job: there were a lot of unseen places, we had to sort out, and we did it.”
RESULTS OF THE 6TH STAGE. TRUCKS
1. NIKOLAEV Eduard (КАМАZ-master)- 3h38:38
2. KOLOMY Martin (Tatra Buggyra Racing) +0:39
3. SOTNIKOV Dmitry (КАМАZ-master) +5:13
4. MARDEEV Airat (КАМАZ-master) +5:51
5. ARDAVICIUS Artur (Astana Motorsport De Rooy Iveco) +5:55
6. SHIBALOV Anton (КАМАZ-master) +6:37
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION. TRUCKS
1. SOTNIKOV Dmitry (КАМАZ-master) – 19h09:17
2. SHIBALOV Anton (КАМАZ-master) +2:12
3. KOLOMY Martin (Tatra Buggyra Racing) +12:53
4. MARDEEV Airat (КАМАZ-master) +24:01
5. ARDAVICIUS Artur (Astana Motorsport De Rooy Iveco) +56:45
6. NIKOLAEV Eduard (КАМАZ-master) +2:08:35