The 2023 edition of the Silk Way Rally can be called special for the KAMAZ-master sports team. The ceremonial start of the multi-day racing marathon will take place on July 6 in the home region of the world leader in rally-raid discipline - the Republic of Tatarstan. It was in Kazan in 2009 that the start of the first ever Silk Way Rally took place, the winner of which was the crew led by Firdaus Kabirov, who outstripped Gerard de Rooy and Alyosha Loprais in a bitter struggle.
Today, the service park and the headquarters of the Silk Way Rally are located on the territory of the modern football stadium Ak Bars Arena. Dozens of participants began their path to success by checking documents and sports equipment - the most important points before the start of the race. Without obtaining permits, none of a single athlete and car can be allowed to participate in the rally, no matter how willing the riders are to test their strength on the most difficult off-road tracks.
Members of the KAMAZ-master team, a ten-time winner of the Silk Way Rally, gathered to go through checks at 9 am. The procedure of administrative control that has been debugged over the years did not take much time, after which the team proceeded to a technical inspection, which resulted in admission to the start of the race.
“The most difficult thing is not to forget to take anything for checks, to put every little thing in the car. The navigator is responsible for the documents, the pilot is responsible for the car, and each of the crew members is responsible for their equipment. The checks were carried out in the normal mode, the wire for the seals was prepared in advance, which accelerated the process of passing the technical inspection. All cars went to the closed park, where they will stand until the solemn start,” said Dmitry Sotnikov, current winner of the Silk Way rally truck category.
Five crews of the KAMAZ-master team will take part in the cargo standings of the rally:
Crew №300: Dmitry Sotnikov (pilot) - Ruslan Akhmadeev (navigator) - Ilgiz Akhmetzyanov (mechanic);
Crew No. 301: Andrey Karginov - Ivan Malkov - Vadim Akhmetov;
Crew No. 303: Eduard Nikolaev - Evgeny Yakovlev - Bogdan Karimov;
Crew No. 305: Sergey Kuprianov - Dmitry Nikitin - Ivan Tatarinov;
Crew No. 307: Hou Hongning - Shen Xin - Sergey Krenev.
The current winner of the "Silk Way" Dmitry Sotnikov and Andrey Karginov will drive sports trucks KAMAZ-435091 of the K5 family. Eduard Nikolaev will start the race on a new version of a bonnet car - KAMAZ-435091K. Sergey Kuprianov will operate truck that uses gas-diesel mixture as fuel. And the Chinese-Russian crew "One Belt - One Road" will go to conquer the off-road on the truck of the previous generation KAMAZ-43509.
Rivals of KAMAZ-master in the truck category will be representatives of three teams - MAZ-SPORTavto (Belarus) and the Russian GAZ Raid Sport and UralMotorSport - the debutant of the Silk Way Rally. In total, more than 90 participants in various categories will take part in the race.
The route of the Silk Way Rally-2023 rally-raid consists of nine stages and runs through 13 regions of Russia, starting in Kazan and finishing on Red Square in Moscow. The total length of the competition route will be 5247 kilometers, 2277 of which are sports special stages.
On the evening of July 6, the solemn start ceremony of the race will take place at the Millennium Square. And already on Friday the sports crews will start fighting for the victory – the crews on the first special stage Kazan – Ufa will have to overcome 142 kilometers in racing mode.
