8 January, San Juan de Marcona
Mysterious place famous Nazca plateau, well-known to us from programs of Yury Senkevich, was lying on today’s route of Dakar contestants to bivouac in San Juan de Marcona. The origin of several dozens of mysterious huge pictures and lines drawn on the ground keep scientists restless. Assistance crews leaving Pisco in the morning stopped on the roadside and looked with interest at the strange figure with risen hands, that could be seen from the viewing platform on Pan-American Highway. Geoglyph with self-explanatory name “Hands” was inadvertently associated with golden hands of KAMAZ-master Team’s mechanics that made a miracle during the night before the start. Badly-hit after yesterday’s fall in the sands truck of Airat Mardeev seemed as a new one by the morning after intense night repair. During the night drive to the fuel station one problem occurred – rear axle gearbox made abnormal sounds. Specialists know what it means to change a gearbox on a truck. And if you need to do it in a field and in conditions of pre-start crunch time, then it becomes clear why real motorsport fans respect night mechanics not less than star pilots.
However, pilots fully understand how difficult work of assistance team is and try not to bring technical problems to the bivouac. But race will be race. And here it is difficult “to cross bridges before you come to them”. About difficulty of the race tells the fact that to the start of 296-kilometer special section Pisco – San Juan de Marcona came 30 race trucks instead of 42 that had kicked off in Lima.
Today two trucks – the Dutch Ton van Genugten and the Belorussian Siarhei Viazovich – fell in dunes. So many accidents for only two full days of the race had not been seen for very long. Probably the sport director of the rally, biker Marc Coma during the route creation should take into consideration characteristics of all vehicles taking part in the race and exclude over-extreme slopes for trucks on a race track.
Martin Van Den Brink was not lucky today as well. The fast Dutch on his Renault could not find a way point for long, Airat Mardeev even met him driving back and as a result the wandering costed him additional 46 minutes at the finish. Unfortunately, crew of Dmitry Sotnikov could not avoid problems too. First he made an attempt to cut in the dunes and got stuck, a bit later his crew had to change the cooling clutch of the water radiator. To solve this problem his own crew and Anton Shibalov’s crew spent approximately an hour. Airat Mardeev was more lucky today than yesterday and showed the third best result on the stage after the stage winner Federico Villagra (03:56:37) and Eduard Nikolaev who finished second (he was 35 seconds slower than Villagra). By the moment of writing this press-release, there was no information about Martin Kolomy as he had not appeared at the finish yet.
The previous night the judges returned 10 minutes to Federico Villagra explaining it that the Argentinian lost time due to malfunction of GPS equipment (this equipment records way points taken by a crew). As a result of such “refund” Villagra in the standings after three days came closer to the first-place holder Eduard Nikolaev and now 8 minutes 58 seconds separate the two rivals. A challenging psychological confrontation started between the Russian and the Argentinean. Villagra is older than Nikolaev and seems more emotionally stable. The weight of responsibility for Eduard in the situation, when his teammates lose too much (D.Sotnikov is 10th, A.Mardeev is 16th, A.Shibalov is 17th) is very high but let’s hope that he and his crew will cope with it.
Quotations:
Vladimir Chagin, leader of KAMAZ-master Team:
“Unpredictability and difficulty are there, where you less expect them – that is the nature of Dakar. All these factors were multiplied because of tough sands that awaited the contestants from the very first specials of the race. But it is an honest exam. The more desire we have to change the situation with our three crews’ results on the nearest stages. The other important task is: the well-performed crew of Eduard Nikolaev must keep the result and continue going in a fast and reliable way at the same time”.
Anton Shibalov, pilot of crew #515:
“Fortunately yesterday we were driving behind Airat and quickly came to help. The place was very challenging. A big sandy trap where, as I know, 17 contestants spent the night. Evacuation of Airat’s truck was not easy, we were running under heat with these ramps and in some moment I felt badly. Probably a heat stroke. Today Dmitry Sotnikov’s crew had a bad luck. We pulled them out twice and the second time we had to change the fan drive”.
Eduard Nikolaev, pilot of crew #500:
“At first we lost five minutes – we stopped in the sands for a while, and then about a minute on navigation. We looked for the track, I lost focus for a little and at a high pressure drove into the sands, very loose as in Mauritania. The pressure was 3,5 atmospheres, and in order to let air out of tires you need 3 minutes. We let the air out and drove out. Cars and quads that had started earlier, hindered, but in general the stage was interesting and challenging”.
Dmitry Sotnikov, pilot of crew #502:
“We drove to the dunes. Not easy, rocky and often. We saw that going ahead TATRA could not take a dune. We tried to go round this place. We got into a sharp sand hole and the cab just bumped into the sand. Most likely it was the reason of fan drive breakdown, apparently due to the hit to the sand. In general, the truck goes well. Sometimes there is loss of power, we try to tune up the engine control program. Nothing is to blame. Today’s situation was definitely not because of the engine”.
Dmitry Svistunov, mechanic of Airat Mardeev’s crew #507:
“We started after HINO, and immediately outran it. There were two specials with neutralization zone and then on the first part we didn’t see anyone. At the finish of second special neither Loprais (TATRA) nor Macik (LIAZ) appeared, though they started before us. Then we were told that Loprais had a problem with the engine. He even went to the bivouac (situated on the neutralization zone). Then we saw Genugten (IVECO), it was unclear why he fell off. There was no sand, the terrain was firm. Then we caught up Dima Sotnikov. We insured him, sometimes let him ahead. We helped with driving trajectory in dunes. Then Sotnikov’s crew disappeared. Approximately 300 metres before the finish line we saw Siarhei Viazovich’s MAZ lying on its side. The race officials made a point on the sand mountain and there he made a mistake – he did not see a small cliff in the sand. But quite fast came and put on the wheels his teammate A.Vasilevsky. Everything seems to improve after yesterday. Airat took his fast and confident tempo. There was no fuss”.
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Dakar-2018. Truck category. Results of 3rd stage
1.VILLAGRA FEDERICO (IVECO) 03:56:37
2.NIKOLAEV EDUARD (KAMAZ) +00:00:35
3.MARDEEV AIRAT (KAMAZ) +00:04:09
4.MACIK MARTIN (LIAZ) +00:13:18
5.VISHNEUSKI ALIAKSEI (MAZ) +00:24:27
6.VIAZOVICH SIARHEI (MAZ) +00:25:05
7.HUZINK GERT (RENAULT) +00:41:03
8.VAN DEN BRINK MARTIN (RENAULT TRUCKS) +00:46:37
9.SUGAWARA TERUHITO (HINO) +00:51:20
10.VASILEVSKI ALEKSANDR (MAZ) +00:51:22
11.ARDAVICHUS ARTUR (IVECO)+00:52:06
12.SOLTYS MARTIN (TATRA) +00:53:08
13.VAN KASTEREN JANUS (RENAULT TRUCKS) +00:58:15
14.SHIBALOV ANTON (KAMAZ) +01:02:52
15.SOTNIKOV DMITRY (KAMAZ) +01:06:18
16.VAN GENUGTEN TON (IVECO) +01:22:34
17.LOPRAIS ALES (TATRA) +01:26:15
18.VAN DEN HEUVEL MAURIK (SCANIA) + 01:30:41
Dakar-2018. Truck category. General Classification after 3rd stage
1. NIKOLAEV EDUARD (KAMAZ) 07:47:19
2. VILLAGRA FEDERICO (IVECO) +0:08:58
3. VISHNEUSKI ALIAKSEI (MAZ) +0:52:34
4. VIAZOVICH SIARHEI (MAZ) +0:53:32
5. MACIK MARTIN (LIAZ ) +1:01:24
6. VAN DEN BRINK (RENAULT TRUCKS) +1:13:42
7. LOPRAIS ALES (TATRA) +1:31:18
8. VAN GENUGTEN TON (IVECO) + 1:42:49
9. SUGAWARA TERUHITO (HINO) +1:43:19
10. SOTNIKOV DMITRY (KAMAZ) + 1:46:44
11. VAN KASTEREN (RENAULT TRUCKS) +2:15:15
12. VAN DEN HEUVEL MAURIK (SCANIA) + 02:25:22
13. ARDAVICHUS ARTUR (IVECO) +2:27:44
14. HUZINK GERT (RENAULT) +2:34:41
15. SOLTYS MARTIN (TATRA) +2:42:22
16. MARDEEV AIRAT (KAMAZ) +2:44:17
17. SHIBALOV ANTON (KAMAZ) + 3:49:08
18. VASILEVSKI ALEKSANDR (MAZ) +05:57:19
