The second stage of Russian Rally-Raid Championship “Gold of Kagan-2016” started On April, 27 in Astrakhan. KAMAZ-master traditionally refers to this race as to the beginning of a new sport season.
6 crews of the team applied for this Astrakhan race:
300 Nikolaev E. - Yakovlev E. - Rybakov V.
301 Mardeev A. – Belyaev A. – Svistunov D.
302 Karginov A. – Kuprianov A. – Leonov I.
303 Sotnikov D. – Akhmadeev R. – Nikitin D.
305 Hou Hongning – Shen Xin – Mokeev A.
All in all 54 crews on trucks and jeeps participate in a four-day marathon on Astrakhan sands.
The starting ceremony was traditionally held near the walls of Astrakhan Kremlin. The prologue route was a six-kilometer special stage. Mapped along the Volga, it was modified and a bit shortened last moment because of the flood. 10 trucks applied for the truck category: 6 KAMAZs, 3 MAZs and 1GAZ.
The best crew on the super special was Eduard Nikolaev with the result of 5 min 55 sec. By the way, it is the sixth time in the overall. Ayrat Mardeev was only 9 sec slower than Eduard (KAMAZ-master 6 min 4 sec). The third position was taken by Andrey Karginov (KAMAZ-master, 6 min 16 sec), then there are Dmitry Sotnikov (KAMAZ-master), Sergey Vyazovich (MAZ-SPORT auto), Anton Shibalov (KAMAZ-master), Alexander Vasilevsky(MAZ-SPORT auto), Hou Hongning (KAMAZ-master),Alexey Vishnevsky (MAZ-SPORT auto), Boleslav Levitsky (GAZ Raid Sport).
Before the start of the prologue there was a press-conference, where the leader of KAMAZ-master and the director of the Silk Way Rally project took part. Questions from the audience were mainly about two topics: a new bonnet truck of KAMAZ-master team and participation of the international Russian-Chinese crew.
Let us remember, during the Silk Way Rally-2016 presentation, which was held last December in Beijing, it was announced that together with the Russian mechanic Andrey Mokeev, two Chinese sportsmen - navigator Shen Xin and driver Hou Hongning will toe the starting line of the Silk Way. The crew will perform on the truck KAMAZ that won the SWR four times.
If Andrey Mokeev is well known for Russian rally fans, Chinese members greeted Russian sportsmen and spectators today. Hou Hongning has a lot of fans in his native land. He is a repeated winner of national and international competitions. The navigator Shen Xin also has a huge experience, for example, in 2015 he was a co-pilot in the crew that took the 3rd position on Taklimakan Rally in the production category.
Russian public welcomed heartily the Chinese sportsmen: the crew, that was created on the initiative of the General Partner of the Silk Way Rally PJSC Gazprom, was very popular today.
Also a big interest was raised to a new unusual for the team bonnet truck - КАМАZ-43509. Black-silver paint of the vehicle relieved against the “Blue Armada” column, attracting everyone’s attention. By general recognition the exterior of the new bolide turned out to be quite harmonious. Aggressive design seems to show intensions of the Russian team to give a fitting reply to competitors on the international competitions, where the “bonnet” topic becomes more and more popular.
Driver Eduard Nikolaev gave a good characteristic of the truck: “There are first results of our work with the truck suspension. It became softer, you turn faster and in a more confident way, moreover the truck goes quite well on hard impassibility. What is important for us now is coasting, we need to know more about the truck’s behavior on different terrain. There’s such a saying – the truck should find its own way. Now I haven’t got used to drive in dunes, sometimes it seems that because of the bonnet I can’t see quickly what lies ahead. Therefore, participation in such competitions like Gold of Kagan before the upcoming Silk Way Rally and Dakar is very important.”
