The contestants of Africa Eco Race 2017 continue to conquer sands of Mauritania. Today they passed a loop special of the rally-marathon, the length of which was a bit more than 400 km.
“Today there were the very longwaited Mauritanian sands. They are really special, and I don’t mean dunes (the maximum dune was, roughly speaking, only a half of KAMAZ high), but the sands themselves, where cars get stuck, don’t go, about which the race officials had warned about”, - said the pilot of KAMAZ-master Team Andrey Karginov.
“Apart from that, today the truck of Sergey Kuprianov “got planted” into the sand, we stopped, helped the guys and then went on together till the end of the sands, as we had planned”, - added the sportsman.
The pilot of the second KAMAZ-master crew on Africa Eco Race, Sergey Kuprianov, also found the stage quite challenging.
“We got stuck in the sand today. We went aside from the tractionized surface to the flat place, and in Mauritania if you go a bit aside, the consistency of sand changes and you just stop. Well, we will keep it in mind tomorrow”, - said the pilot of KAMAZ-master Team Sergey Kuprianov.
Unfortunately, the problems with the Mauritanian sands were not last for the crew of Sergey Kuprianov. 15 km before the finish the sportsmen had to change a wheel.
“Approximately 25 min were lost due to the standstill, then about 5 of them we won back from Valtr, you can see it by the speed at crossing the CP, but then about 150 km before the finish, our wheel was punctured. First the pumping system coped with it, but then, at about 15 km before the finish it didn’t help. It was impossible to continue our way. We had to change the wheel and there we lost 11 minutes more”, - added Kuprianov.
Tomorrow the teams will leave the bivouac near Tiwilit town where they had spent two days. They have to pass a special section with the length of more than 400 km and a short liaison, about 25 km long.
Results of the 7th Leg:
Valtr 4:51:3
Tomecek +17:21:
Karginov +21:11:
Kuprianov +32:54
Darazsi + 2:09:15
Gonzalez +4:38:44
