"Trucks category in Dakar is like two planets. One is "KAMAZ-master", another is all other trucks teams", - the head of trucks category of Dakar Fabien Calvet told last night. The Frenchman looked a little upset after messages from the route on the problems which happened to Dutchman Gerard De Rooy. Let’s remind that his IVECO with a damage of the rear axle stood for a few hours on the route of the stage Chilecito - Copiapo. His car reached the bivouac closer to midnight. On the official website of the race there was no information on results with which De Rooy's crew finished this stage, there was also no information on penalties for the not taken navigation points. But in the morning many were surprised to find the crew 501 in the starting list on 26 positions. Though many were convinced that if the Dutch has luck and he is admitted to the start, in the best case he will start behind all other trucks.
Certainly explanation decisions of the judges will appear later, but such support probably not too much inspired Gerard, throughout all 458-kilometer special stage almost on all control points he showed results not above the eighth. KAMAZ trio Karginov, Nikolaev, Mardeev was in the lead during all SS. Further with very close results there were Stacey, Sotnikov, Loprais, Kolomy and Vyazovich.
After the first half of the route disturbing news comes: Andrey Karginov droving faster that anyone suddenly began to lag behind the best at that moment Eduard Nikolaev for 23 minutes 57 seconds.
The situation was clarified by Andrey after the finish on a bivouac: "Very fast route. Such as we like. We drove at maximum speeds. Somewhere on the 240th kilometer we went on quite narrow road, after one pit of two signs we landed and didn't get to a track and punched at once two wheels on the stones lying along the roadside. We lost time on it. Dmitry Sotnikov's crew stopped to help us. Therefore, it is evident that in this area he lost time. "
Many participants of the race note that they should be get used to a format of road book this year. There are subjective moments. For example, one pit marked by two signs can be quite usual, and other pit which is also marked by two signs can be 4 signs pit. On the other hand all crews work at the route with the same road book and therefore it seems all are on an equal footing.
Today, for example, Hans Stacey wasn't also lucky. Dmitry Sotnikov saw his crew replacing the wheel. Both crews of IVECO (both Stacey, and De Rooy) lost a lot in the second half of a special stage. Perhaps, the reason was a strong traffic and dust. On the route there were a lot of lagged behind jeeps, besides by the end of day the sun shone directly into the eyes of pilots that under conditions of strong dust made overtaking almost impossible.
Together with results of today's stage the situation with a yesterday's episode of Gerard De Rooy cleared up: judges gave him for the previous SS a penalty of 40 minutes, and his general lag from the leader of the category Eduard Nikolaev (15 h 16 min 18 sec) in general classification with the late finish the day before made 7 hours 23 minutes. The second in the overall standings – Ayrat Mardeev (+08:01 min.). For the third place there will be a fight between Ales Loprais (+27:28 min.) and Andrey Karginov (+27:36 min.). On the fifth position – KAMAZ crew of Dmitry Sotnikov (+45:57 min.), but he is followed by fast Belarusian on MAZ truck Sergey Vyazovich (+51:28 min.).
Results of the 5th stage of DAKAR rally. Trucks category
General classification after the 5th stage
