Photo finish at SU-2A of the second stage of the Silk Way rally-marathon

On Friday evening, the Silk Way 2024 rally marathon had its official start on Lenin Square in Tomsk, and on Saturday morning the drivers set off towards Barnaul. The southern course led the rally caravan along the longest stage of the 14th edition of one of the most extreme races in the world: divided into two special stages with an intermediate liazon, it stretched for an impressive 619 kilometers.

The starting special stage under the index 2A with the length of 79 kilometers became a difficult test for the crews of the truck classification, who set off on the route from the first positions. Bogdan Karimov, who had won the first stage of his career on the Silk Way a day earlier, had to make his way for all the other participants through the tall grass that reached up to the radiator grille of the KAMAZ. And so almost all day long. It was logical to expect a high pace from the young KAMAZ-master pilot - the risk of jeopardizing the health of the crew and damaging the sports equipment in such a situation, especially at the very beginning of the 11-day marathon, seemed unreasonable.

Karimov's crew's "road building" did not go without a trace for his car: already at the 15th kilometer the engine started to overheat due to a radiator clogged with grass. Forced stops to clean the system, as well as a small error in navigation for the finish of special stage 2B (its length was 100 km), also added extra minutes to the scoring time. As a result - 11 and a half minutes behind the winner of the stage.

Bogdan Karimov, pilot of crew #306: "We started first, we had to cut the way for everyone else in the tall grass. The grass clogged the radiator and the engine started to overheat. We stopped twice to clean the radiator. Yesterday's first place played against us today: if we had started at least fourth, I think we wouldn't have had any problems.

The narrow and slippery tracks hidden between the trees were also a hindrance for the big trucks. No wonder that at the finish of the second special section most of the cars were "decorated" with birch branches. The artificial antennas sticking up looked especially spectacular on the final kilometers of the sports day, when the crews drove on fast field roads and were able to accelerate properly, having got out of the grass captivity.

 Eduard Nikolaev, the leader and pilot of KAMAZ-Master, who drove non-stop through Saturday's race, also encountered engine overheating, but this did not prevent the five-time winner of the Dakar Rally Marathon from staging a thrilling absentee battle with his MAZ-SPORTavto colleague Sergey Vyazovich. At the finish of SU-2A the Belarusian was 15 seconds ahead of Nikolaev, but on SU-2B crew number 302 managed to win back the gap and both pilots showed the same time (1 hour 6 minutes 3 seconds), as if it was not a rally-marathon with a murderous off-road, but a Formula 1 speedway. In the final protocol, Vyazovich took the first place with 15 seconds advantage.

Eduard Nikolaev, pilot of crew #302: "Today, those who started first were unlucky - Bogdan Karimov. There are not any tracks in the tall grass and he lost time. Rally-raids are peculiar, and somewhere you need to be able to go first, and somewhere to catch up. We were a bit luckier, we tried to keep the pace, the first part of the track was rally, and then it turned into narrow, winding and boggy with fords. It was very slippery, it was important not to make a mistake. The second part of the stage was similar to the first one, only the end was speedy. And in the beginning there were a lot of crossings of various small glades, forests, ravines and fords.

I would like to thank Sergey Talantsev, you can see that the organizers tried and made the route rich and interesting. And thank you very much to the fans, there were a lot of them today. Seeing us, people waved their hands, and this is important for us, it encourages us in a hard road. And it's great that we have such conditions at home - in Russia".

Alexey Vishnevsky finished just behind the stage winner, with Andrei Karginov 20 seconds behind him. Another KAMAZ-master crew, driven by Dmitry Sotnikov, four-time champion of the Silk Way Rally Marathon, entered the top 5. Alexey Popov, who made his debut in the race as a pilot of the UralMotorSport team, was pleasantly surprised by the high result and good passing of the route.

Sergey Kuprianov, a KAMAZ-master pilot driving a gas-diesel truck, also made it to the top-10, having shown the seventh time.

Sergey Kuprianov, pilot of crew #308: "Today there were many narrow places, in one of them we slightly missed the road. We managed to dodge one tree, but caught another. But it's OK, nothing terrible happened. I liked the special stage, it was diverse: roads in the grass, in the forest, dirt tracks with gravel. In my opinion, it was a very good stage".

P.S. In the evening after writing the release it became known that the crews of Eduard Nikolaev, Dmitry Sotnikov and Yuri Naiman received 10-second penalization, the crew of Alexey Popov - 40 seconds penalty.

The third stage on the route Barnaul - Gorno-Altaisk will be held on Sunday. The total length will be 351 kilometers, of which 133 kilometers will be high-speed special stages.

Truck standings. Results of the 2^nd  stage

Truck standings. General classification after the 2^nd stage