45 degrees of a heat in San Juan, the second bivouac of Dakar-2015, perhaps it was too severe challenge for participants, organizers, and journalists. The first mountain areas laid at altitudes of about 2000 meters, stony surfaces only aggravated difficulties of today's 331-kilometer high-speed section of Villa Carlos Paz - San Juan. The most part of SS was more than 100 kilometers long descent on which brakes were strongly heated. It was dangerous as the route abounded with fast turns opening on chasms and gorges.
Mechanics of "KAMAZ-master" team worked all night long on Eduard Nikolaev's car. We will remind, at a yesterday's stage the car on one of turns in dust at a high speed pulled off the route, nestled against the ditch, the result - bent right frame spar and displaced front axle. Failure correction was finished only at 9 am that is almost to the start of today's stage. Perhaps, a sense of responsibility to the team and feeling of gratitude to mechanics became good motivators for Eduard's crew today – he finished with the best time (03:34:01). The head of the team Vladimir Chagin celebrates his 45 anniversary today and, perhaps, it was the best gift for him. I remember five years ago the title of an article in the French L'Equipe - "Fifty-forty," there was talk of the fiftieth victory of Chagin at stages of Dakar that happened exactly on the day of his fortieth birthday. Well, guys of "Tsar" still have enough time to try to repeat records of their mentor.
Good occasion to be glad for our Belarusian friends the MAZ team – Sergey Vyazovich showed the second result today, having lost to Eduard Nikolaev less than a minute of time (03:34:41). The Belarusian sportsman explained the good result by the fact that all the time he kept in sight Gerard De Roy's crew driving ahead. And even at some moment overtook the Dutchman standing with open hood. We could not learn the reasons of his stop, but a whisper goes round that he had problems with the electronic accelerator pedal.
Ayrat Mardeev today the third (03:34:50). Dmitry Sotnikov – Dmitry Sotnikov – the ninth! The youngest KAMAZ competitor under the number 520 after today's stage progressed up in the general classification, improving his starting positions for the following stages. Dmitry was even faster than Andrey Karginov (the 10th place, 03:39:24)and Gerard De Roy (the 11th place, 03:39:28) at the stage.
