Dakar-2017: the chasing has begun!

3 January, Tucuman

The curve of the elevation profile of today’s special Resistencia – Tucuman is almost a straight line – changeless 250 meters above sea level. Burned by the sun flat Chaco valley became a battle field of the second race day of Dakar-2017. Translated from the Kechua language “chaco” is a “hunting land”. It’s a quite suitable name for today’s 284-km special. “The chasing” has really begun!

The yesterday’s special showed serious intentions of the main KAMAZ-master rivals. Very tight results showed good preparation of vehicles and crews. Of course, on the 39- km track navigators and mechanics were not involved. Nevertheless, the standings show that no one promises to KAMAZ crews easy walk across South American vast spaces.

 Special navigation tasks were not prepared for today’s leg as well. 40-degree heat, dust and herd of cows(!) became main challenges of the second Dakar leg. Martin Van Den Brink on his bonnet  Renault Sherpa with Dmitry Sotnikov, chasing him, set the pace during almost the whole second half of the race. He was only a few seconds behind the leader. At the finish the distance between the very two crews went up by 2 minutes, but Dmitry Sotnikov could keep the second position. Airat Mardeev was out of luck today as he had to stop due to the technical problems.

In the standings after two legs Dmitry Sotnikov took the 2^nd position after the Dutchman Martin Van Den Brink, with the time-difference of 3 min 9 sec, the crew of Eduard Nikolaev is the 9^th (+04:32), Anton Shibalov is the 15^th (+08:37), Airat Mardeev is the 18^th (+17:39).

 Quotations

 Dmitry Sotnikov (pilot, crew No513)

 “It was a very hot day. It was hard to understand what our speed was, we just saw Villagra going in front of us. We came closer to him and drove in dust for a long time, thinking that we are losing plenty of time. Today many sportsmen had problems with dust. It is a typical stage for the first days, with lots of villages and speed limits. I can’t say that the leg required special driving skills, there were no fast tracks, you just needed to stop on time and speed up fast. However, you it was important not to get any penalties. I’m happy that we could drive it in a stable way.”

 Evgeny Yakovlev (co-pilot, crew No505)

 “It was difficult to call it “rally-raid” as the special consisted only of straight tracks without any navigation tasks, with run across inhabited areas, where you are afraid to break the speed limits. Moreover, plenty of dust made situation worse,  it’s almost impossible to overrun the vehicles in front of you due to safety reasons. You don’t see anything because of the dust and Sentinel, the signal we give when we warn about our overdrive, cannot be heard by the front crew because of the small radius. I hope that tomorrow’s special will be more interesting, just because it is laid in the foothills of Andes and the terrain and tracks are going to be more varied than today’s way from A to B.”

 Airat Mardeev (pilot, crew No501)

 “We drove at a good speed, so far as the heavy dust permitted it. But 100 km before the finish line our HPS pipe blew out. It took us around 12 minutes for the repair.”

 Anton Shibalov (pilot, crew No515)

 “We had moments when we drove into the cloud of dust and just stopped because of zero visibility. We stood in the dark until the dust went down. Then by a miracle we overrun a car stopped in the dust between fences of farm lands. Today’s result relied heavily on good luck – how free the track was in front of you, how fast your driving was. The situation became worse when after the first CP the track of the trucks joined the car track and cars, that left behind, prevented us from going fast. 

Dakar-2017. Truck Category. Results after the 2^nd stage (first 17 crews). 

Dakar-2017. Truck Category. General Classification after 2 legs (first 17 crews).