After two quite speed stages on fast and mainly hard surface roads, third day’s stage of “Rally Kazakhstan” began with not simple dune section, mapped in the sands of small Tuyesu desert, located in Mańǵystaý region on the outskirts of the village Senek. A ridge of dunes spread from the south-east to the north-east on 30 km, their biggest width from the north to the south is approximately 12 km. Constant winds and fine-grained sand make local heap of dunes quite chaotic and the terrain reminds Astrakhan sands with quite unpleasant careens, where one must seek for the trajectory of movement in a fast and at the same time accurate way. But KAMAZ crews quite confidently passed this sand part. A small adventure – Sergey Kuprianov’s truck fell on its side – happened a bit later, on firm ground. This is how the pilot described the situation: “We passed dunes without problems, in the middle of the special stage were fast but very curvy tracks between vegetation. On one turn we got into a deep scour and lied on the side. Behind were only Gazel vehicles, no one was able to put it onto wheels, but in one Gazel there was navigator Zhenya Pavlov from Tver club “Lebedushka”. With his help (+4 spades, 2 Hi-Jacks and a standard jack) we could raise the truck and Gazels could return us onto wheels. Thanks to this we could finish within the allowed time and without penalties.”
After the finish Sergey looked upset, as he admitted, it was the first case, when he overturned KAMAZ. Result of the stage (6 hours 35 minutes 23 seconds) could certainly be different, if after it had followed Andrey Karginov’s crew, then it would have been much faster to put the truck onto wheels. But KAMAZ crews don’t have a strict rule to follow one after another. Everyone should go at his max tempo.
Andrey Karginov finished the stage with time 03:41:01 and even managed to observe landscapes: “Today’s route is very beautiful. Quite long we drove on picturesque plateau. Before we found a descent from it, we saw that started ahead of us cars were giving up dust somewhere beneath. This was a fantastically beautiful picture. Then there was a descent with trial elements. Stony narrow roads even reminded South American Ands. All in all, there were enough stones. We didn’t drive along a narrow rut as cars, somewhere we “cut”. And it seems that we damaged tread at the stones, but inflating system was coping with it, it allowed driving to the finish without changing the wheel. Already before the finish we partly took a “piece” of yesterday’s SS, it was well ploughed up to the condition of fesh-fesh, but we managed to keep a good speed – the engine performs rather good”.
