According to project manager of "Silk Way Rally" Semen Yakubov, the fifth series of marathon has undergone significant changes:
- The message when developing the rally was to return to the good old tradition of the African race, with its long special stages, lots of sand and difficult orientation. At such temperature, which will be in the territory of the Astrakhan and Volgograd regions, where there are drift sand and long special stages, it will be very and very difficult competition.
It should be noted that at the request of competitors of a marathon organizers considerably reduced kilometrage of liaisons, and this fact considerably increased the length of special stages, sometimes up to 500 kilometers instead of 200-300 which were before.
The current race aroused considerable interest as a previous series of a marathon. So, 100 competitors will participate in various categories, among them 26 trucks.
In spite of the fact that KAMAZ crews don't exclude probability that any competitor can "shoot", the main rival after all is Ales Loprais on "Tatra".
- "KAMAZ-master" is a strong team, but it constantly feels serious pressure from the best sportsmen of the world and the most "irritating" factor on each of the races where they leave, is Czech sportsmen, and first of all Ales Loprais – Semen Yakubov says.
It should be noted that this time the Czech sportsman – the nephew of the legendary six-time champion of "Dakar" Karel Loprais – will test the new car on the race. His "Tatra" reminds a very big SUV, and because of this somebody on the race even began to joke that Loprais the Younger will soon change the category, but Ales laughed off:
- My dream is to drive the SUVs but as I am born in a family which drives trucks, I will support the family tradition. On this race we will present the new car, and we will try to meet all regulations and rules of the declared category.
"KAMAZ-master" will also drive updated sports trucks.
- "Silk Way Rally" is one of the main races for us as it directly can compete with "Dakar" both on complexity and length of routes, - Ayrat Mardeev said. - It attracts our main competitors with whom we are fighting on "Dakar" therefore we consider "Silk Way Rally" as general test before transcontinental race so we test all our innovations here.
