In the middle of April in Astrakhan will be held stages of Russian Championship and Russian Cup for rally-raids and cross-country rallies. On 12-14 April more than 50 crews from across Russia will gather in Astrakhan for participation in “Gold of Kagan”. Cunning Astrakhan sands more than once challenged contestants, but this year the race organizers decided to move away from usual extreme impassibility, banking on technical fast tracks and difficult navigation.
Sergey Savostin, functioning as KAMAZ-master Team’s manager, made comments on participation of the team in the race. Meanwhile Vladimir Chagin will fly to Astrakhan too, but more as an observer, because now he is having a hot period – in the capacity of the project manager of international Silk Way Rally he is busy with preparation of the super-marathon, which will be held in July on the route China-Kazakhstan-Russia.
In particular, Sergey Savostin said: “Participation in the rally-raid “Gold of Kagan” in KAMAZ-master Team is traditionally associated with the start of annual preparation season to big international competitions.
Three months are left before the start of international rally-marathon Silk Way Rally and Astrakhan tracks are perfect to test yourself and vehicles. Especially important this time is for truck testing. We are applying four trucks on the race. Within our collaborative work with PJSC Gazprom and VTB bank is built a new race truck with 16-liter engine (earlier in this project we used engine with 18-liter engine). Anton Shibalov and Sergey Kuprianov will have to test it.
Due to his business on responsible position in PJSC Gazprom, Sergey will be able to take part only in the team’s training session on Sunday, after the rally finish.
Eduard Nikolaev will drive a bonnet truck, already familiar to the fans. Last big competitions in which this truck took part, was Silk Way Rally-2016. But now it is virtually a new truck, in which were improved a lot of units and aggregates - from chassis to modified by the team new in-line six-cylinder engine, that will be used in all race vehicles of Naberezhnye Chelny team starting from Dakar-2019. Such engine installed on the truck of Dmitry Sotnikov has already passed tests by Silk Way Rally-2017 and Dakar-2018. Dmitry’s crew will also continue its development and optimization within the upcoming race in Astrakhan.
And finally Andrey Karginov, rehabilitated after last-year trauma returns to active competition program. Of course, Astrakhan route is very tough, but Karginov is an experienced pilot and can adapt and drive on any surfaces in a balanced way”.
