The crew of Eduard Nikolaev entered the top 3 at the home stage of the Silk Way Rally 2023

The starting stage of the Silk Way Rally from Kazan to Ufa has become symbolic for KAMAZ-master: the finish of the special stage is located just 100 kilometers from the team's homeland, Naberezhnye Chelny. Such closeness allowed the fans to touch the competition and live to support the crews on the track. The heightened spectator interest on Friday was noted by many pilots, paying particular attention to the fact that they had not seen this at the races for a very long time.

The distance of the first speed stage was not too much long, totally 142 km (the length of the whole stage is 618 km). To run into a multi-day marathon is a suitable option. However, the 100% ground track with a lot of beams and ravines made adjustments: dry and hot weather dried up the soil, creating all the conditions for a very dusty race. This affected the pace of many crews, claiming high positions, but starting not in the first part of the application list.

The picturesque lake in the suburbs of Kazan was not the only water source that the rally caravan saw on its way. The organizers of the Silk Way laid the track through the fords. Although they did not harbor a threat with their depth (the water barely touched the bottom of the truck), but on one of them, with the wrong speed limit, it was easy to damage the car by bumping into an insidious step when descending from the shore. This is what caught one of the representatives of the all-terrain vehicle classification, who stopped for serious repairs immediately after driving through the river.

In the thirteenth edition of the Silk Way International Rally, the representation of the truck classification expanded to 12 cars, thanks also to the debutant of the race, the UralMotorSport team, which competes on URAL sports equipment under the control of Yuri Naiman, the son of the legendary racer, multiple truck trial winner Vladimir Naiman. And the first start in rally-raids for the factory pilot can be considered successful even despite the loss of about 10 minutes due to engine overheating.

But another debutant of the Silk Way is the Chinese crew from the GAZ Raid Sport team consisting of Ma Goje and Li Dongfeng was not lucky. In the second half of the 142-kilometer special stage, their truck fell on the roof at one of the turns. The racers were not injured, but the technical team went to help behind the sports truck. Will the representatives of the Celestial Empire continue their journey through the vast expanses of Russia, in love with which Ma Goje confessed at a press conference before the start of the rally, it will become known on Saturday.

For the five crews of the KAMAZ-master team, the first stage was different. The current winner of the rally, Dmitry Sotnikov, together with co-driver Ruslan Akhmadeev, had to play a quiz at the crossroads of numerous tracks and one of these artificial "crossroads" sent the crew in the wrong direction, adding a few extra minutes to the test time. Andrey Karginov's crew got into a similar situation.

Dmitry Sotnikov, pilot of crew No. 300: “The beginning was quite nervous, because there were a lot of rolled out tracks and I had to choose the right one. The fact that we were the first of the trucks to open the way added to the complexity. We passed the first crossroads confidently, but then we had to choose. We left for a kilometer to the right, returned back to the track, where we lost time. There were also many restrictions: dangerous areas, ravines invisible from the cab. And it was necessary to get into the right rhythm, to roll.

We drove more between the fields, the track was dry and dusty, in some places there was gravel. Because of the dust, sometimes we had to stop completely. In general, the stage turned out to be good, technically everything is in order, there are no remarks”.

Andrey Karginov, pilot of crew No. 301: “We started behind all the off-road vehicles, we understood that we would roll on poorly moving jeeps, and there was a column of dust from them, sometimes we had to reduce the speed to almost zero. In such conditions, we didn’t orient twice and went to the wrong place, we lost precious two or three minutes.

The decision to start motorcycles and quads behind the cargo classification is the right one, because it is a common safety. Due to the large amount of dust, we have to take risks, although we try to minimize the risks. And if there were motorcyclists in front, we would have to slow down by wasting of time.”

The Chinese-Russian crew of the “One Zone, One Road”, led by Hou Hongning, from the first stage demonstrated their focus on repeating the success of 2016, when they finished fifth in the overall standings at the end of the race. This time the pilot also showed a high pace, showing the second time after the WP-1 mark, and he finished with the sixth result. The victory at the stage was won by Belarusian Aleksey Vishnevsky from MAZ-SPORTavto, it took him almost 100 minutes to overcome the distance. Less than 30 seconds, teammate Sergey Vyazovich conceded to him, Eduard Nikolaev, who competes on a KAMAZ bonnet truck, rounded out the top three.

Eduard Nikolaev, pilot of crew No. 303: “From the start we took the pace, the task was to roll ahead of the participants from the first meters. I understood that if you don’t drive up to them in time, you won’t be able to do it further because of the dust. After 7-8 km they saw Sergey Vyazovich, started to drive up and ran into his dust. After 2-3 km, Andrey Karginov left, it was clear that he made a mistake in the juncture in navigation, and stood between us. Then Sergey broke away, and we drove more than 100 km in Andrey's dust. And here the main thing is not to go somewhere in such conditions, not to overdo it. There was a law: if you don't see it, don't go. Because there are a lot of ravines and pits on the track, they could easily be “found” in the restricted visibility zone.”

The one-of-a-kind sports gas-diesel truck KAMAZ-master, driven by Sergey Kuprianov, has undergone some changes compared to last year and once again demonstrated its reliability in the most difficult off-road conditions. As a result, the crew showed the eighth time of the day.

The second stage on the Ufa-Magnitogorsk route will take place on Saturday. The total length of the route will be 571 kilometers, of which 246 will be on high-speed sections.

Trucks standings. The results of the 1^st stage