January 6, San Rafael. The problems with the system of competitors’ results tracking in real time continue for the second consecutive day on the Dakar. There were the only one place where the system worked during the stage, it was CP1. The km 259 of the special was the only reference point for understanding what was happening on the track. But the information about the results of the truck special stage caused more questions than answers. Let’s see: the best time showed Belarusian Siarhei Vyazovich and his MAZ. This crew has made an improvement of 3'24" on the previous best time set by Anton Shibalov. Further, the results of dozen other pilots appeared within 10 minutes. Ales Loprais, Ayrat Mardeev, Andrey Karginov, Alexander Vasilevsky... There is no information about De Rooy and other fast Dutch pilots. It remains only to guess the reasons of the lack of news from the road – maybe there are problems with engines overheating (the rally point is at an altitude of about 2000 meters, besides it is the terrible heat here, Nani Roma later confirmed that his oil temperature was really close to critical) or the crews have to change tyres, as a lot of participants on cars did today. Carlos Sainz, for example, said that it is better to be a little bit careful to stop the tyres wearing.
Meanwhile, we were waiting for the most difficult part of the stage. The first dunes come in the last kilometers. The organizers have prepared of about 60 kilometers of sand in the desert Niuil. And about 5 kilometers are the dunes quite heavy to overcome. It is at the end of the stage that the most dramatic events of the day have happened. The biggest trouble of the day is an accident of the crew of Ayrat Mardeev. At the km 386 of the special when KAMAZ followed along the edge of dry river bed, the soil has fallen under the wheels and KAMAZ crashed and turned completely onto the top. Fortunately, the crew wasn’t injured, but it seems not possible to set the truck back upright without the help. According to today's stage winner Anton Shibalov who was first at the bivouac, the truck of Ayrat crashed and tipped over, it will be very difficult to set it upright. After the finish of the last participant of today’s stage, the assistance crew of the experienced Farid Badretdinov will go to help Ayrat.
At the time of this writing, the information of truck special times and standings on the organizers' website was incorrect. The adjustment of the final truck times seems to be available only in the morning.
P.S. 22 minutes spent on assisting the crew of Mardeev were returned to Gerard de Rooy. The results are the following:
