One of the longest specials was described by the race officials as navigational and fast, but the problems occurred not only with navigation.
Stephane Peterhansel’s car had a problem on the track and the crew lost almost an hour. Due to this loss of time the sportsman now only 13th in the general classification. Sebastien Loeb also lost 17 minutes, but managed to keep the lead in the overall. First in this category was Cyril Despres, overkeeping Chinese driver Zhou Yong for only 6 minutes 26 seconds.
Today Gerard de Rooy left the track due to the broken right rail of the cab and got to the bivouac by public roads. The new Iveco couldn’t stand the test by Kazakh steppes. The Dutch will continue the race, but the battle for the podium is over for him.
Also Martin Kolomy faced problems. “Flying” out of the track to the loose soil costed him 37 minutes and moved him down to the third position in the overall.
Airat Mardeev lost 26 minutes to change a punctured wheel, and it makes him fourth in the general classification. Eduard Nikolaev’s crew showed a good result, finishing with a 10-minute gap from Dmitry Sotnikov.
The best in the truck category today was Dmitry Sotnikov, with a time advantage of 4 minutes. Apart from it the KAMAZ drivers took second and third places in the overall, giving lead to Cyril Despres. By the way, Anton Shibalov’s crew participates in the race as a fast assistance truck and as he told later he tried not to keep close to him in order to help each other if necessary. They did it and showed excellent teamwork.
QUOTATIONS
Dmitry Sotnikov, pilot of KAMAZ-master Team, crew No303:
“Today’s stage was very fast and it was easier to navigate for those who went behind a number of participants. It is usual for rally raids. Today was the fastest special concerning the medium speed, just “pedal to the metal” and trying to cut everywhere possible and we did it. I had a target to catch up Anton Shibalov and be as close to him as possible, as most of spare parts was with him. May be that was our motivation. And as soon as we reached him, we continued together. We caught up Kolomy, he let us ahead and then we were just “flying”. Then reaching Viazovich, we had an interesting battle: we didn’t signal him, just overplayed him by trajectories. I think both of us did a great job today. I would give him another first place (laughes).”
Anton Shibalov, pilot of KAMAZ-master Team, crew No312:
“Having passed a half of the special Dmitry Sotnikov caught us up and we drove in a line most of the time: Kolomy, our crew and Dima’s crew. Due to the heavy dust it was hard to come closer. We drove approximately 200 km after Kolomy. Then on the maximum speed together with Dima we came closer to him and he let us ahead. Then there was impassibility, where he lost 40 minutes. But the most interesting started 40 km before the finish, when we reached Viazovich: only a battle of navigators, cuttings, and in the end we could overpass him.”
Eduard Nikolaev, KAMAZ-master Team, crew No307: “The day was good. We drove fast and even were surprised that Dima and Anton “brought” us. We overpassed Viazovich, for a long time he was driving behind us. The Kolomy was standing – he got stuck, went into the wrong direction. We saw de Rooy standing. The whole day we were fighting with cars, overkeeping them, catching them up, overkeeping them on the turns but they reached us on straight roads again.”
Airat Mardeev, pilot of KAMAZ-master Team, crew No 300: “At first we went at a good pace, we overran Kolomy and Viazovich, saw Nikolaev ahead and understood that were going with a good speed. We overkept de Rooy. We moved further and punctured a tyre. Usually you drive, see that you got on a stone – everything is clear then, but today I didn’t see anything. I don’t know where and how I punctured the wheel, just the mechanic said that we had a tyre puncture. It was a side inside cut – it is difficult to do with a stone.”
Gerard de Rooy, pilot of Petronas De Rooy Iveco Team, crew No 302: “We broke a cab’s shock absorber. It is impossible to drive that way on the impassibilty, therefore we decided to leave the special and went to the bivouac. It is very sad, because we started the race so good. We don’t have a single chance for the podium, but we’ll continue the race in order to test our new truck and compete with rivals.”
RESULTS OF THE 5TH STAGE
Cars
Cyril Despres (Peugeot Sport) – 4h30:00
LIU Yangui (Baicmotor Racing Team) +6:26
Bryce Menzies (X-Raid MINI) +14:02
LU Binglong (Baicmotor Racing Team) +17:00
Sebastien Loeb (Peugeot Sport) +17:40
Trucks
Dmitry Sotnikov (КАМАZ-master) – 4h32:17
Anton Shibalov (КАМАZ-master) +4:03
Eduard Nikolaev (КАМАZ-master) +9:47
Siarhei Viazovich (МАZ-SPORTauto) +16:10
Airat Mardeev (КАМАZ-master) +26:20
GENERAL STANDINGS
Cars
Sebastien Loeb (Peugeot Sport) - 13ч43:50
Cyril Despres (Peugeot Sport) +50:16
Bryce Menzies (X-Raid MINI) +1ч15:30
Christian Lavieille (Baicmotor Racing Team) +1ч28:30
Han Wei (Geely SMG) +1ч30:56
Trucks
Dmitry Sotnikov (КАМАZ-master) – 4h32:17
Anton Shibalov (КАМАZ-master) +0:48
Martin Kolomy (Tatra Buggyra Racing) +15:27
Airat Mardeev (КАМАZ-master) +23:23
Artur Ardavichus (Astana Motorsports Team De Rooy Iveco) +56:03
Nikolaev Eduard (КАМАZ-master) +2:13:48
