KAMAZ-MASTER CREWS STREGTHENED THEIR POSITIONS

10 January, Tacna

Dakar is getting closer to its equator. On January 12 all participants are awaited by the long-desired rest in Arequipa. But before that, on the fourth and fifth days of the race, the organizers decided to test the contestants with a marathon stage. On January 10 the bivouac in Tacna awaited the contestants of the car and truck categories, and the bivouac in Moquegua – the bike and quad riders, where the crews had to do without technical assistance and the sportsmen had to fix all possible breakdowns without help of mechanics. Fortunately, KAMAZ crews passed the 352-kilometer special stage, divided by a neutralization zone, without any serious problems. Andrey Karginov punctured two wheels on the stage, damaged a disc on one, and drove inflating the tires. There were short time losses in the soft sand in the amount of not more than 1.5 minutes. There also were some problems with navigation, which also influenced the result. Nevertheless, Andrey showed the best time of the day in the truck classification. Dmitry Sotnikov had a similar situation as on the first part of the marathon stage last year. His crew had to stop at the 68th kilometer. The boost disappeared. The rubber pipe between the turbocharger and the radiator blew out. Yesterday the old pipe was specially replaced with a new one, so the cause of the problem is not completely clear yet. We lost about 15 minutes for the replacement. In the neutralization zone (the stop there does not count for the passage of the stage) the damaged wheel was replaced. Airat Mardeev’s crew also changed the wheel in the neutralization zone. Today he had to make a lot of overtaking because of a bad starting position after yesterday’s unfortunate stage. His crew also had some time losses due to navigation. The crew of Eduard Nikolaev passed the stage without an incident. The truck is ok. At the 27th kilometer the crew got stuck in the soft sand, lost about 13 minutes to get out. They saved the wheels undamaged.

More serious were problems of the Russian rivals. The Argentinean Federico Villagra lost more than an hour at the stage. The reasons are still unknown. Yesterday the table of the general classification already changed not in favor of KAMAZ-master rivals. Getting stuck on the dune, the Dutch Gerard De Rooy lost more than an hour. A few hours were lost on the stage by the Belarusian Siarhei Viazovich due to a breakdown in the hub. Martin Kolomy and Ales Loprais had various problems. Against this background, the young Czech pilot Martin Macik makes an excellent performance on his LIAZ. Today he was second only a minute and a half after the leader of the stage, Andrey Karginov. In the general classification the Czech is fourth right after Eduard Nikolaev, Andrey Karginov and Dmitry Sotnikov with a gap of 28 minutes 48 seconds from the leader. Of course, the gap from this leaders group of Gerard De Rooy (5th place, +1 hour 48 minutes 16 seconds) and Airat Mardeev (6th place, +1 hour 54 minutes 18 seconds) is very large. But tomorrow is the second part of the marathon stage, and after the rest day is another half of the race in the sands in the opposite direction from Arequipa to Lima and in the meantime can happen a lot.

Truck Category. Classification of Stage 4

Truck Category. General Classification after Stage 4