Today in the early morning crews and assistance trucks left bivouac in Dakhla. We had to cross the border of Morocco /Mauritania, which had stretched on late last time and the stage had been neutralized. What was our surprise at finding that the formalities at the two borders took us not more than 40 minutes, rather than 6 hours as last year. Race organizers made a try and negotiated with authorities of Mauritania to ease the formalities. On the border we simply got a stamp in our passports about entry to Mauritania, and then border patrol agents brought “mini-staff” for visa processing to Chami bivouac, where the competitors could get visas after the special section.
Our press-group was waiting for us at the start, and photographer Sergey Polivets organized a great collective photo session of all Russian participants: “KAMAZ-master” crews, Alexander Terentyev and Alexei Berkut (RE Autoclub), Anton Grigorov and Roman Elagin, Anastasiya Nifontova(VEB Racing), Dmitry Agoshkov (Troyka Team). All the Russian crews continue the fight.
Today the race with the length of 174 km was again very fast! We were driving at the speed of 130 kmh for 56 km, a turn, 78 km at the speed of 180 kmh, a turn, and at the speed of 130 kmh straight to the finish – that was all. Of course, there were jumps, sometimes they were dangerous. There were sandy crossings, curvy roads among dunes, crossing areas with tough sands. We also needed to have a good look at changes in the legend before the finish, but in general we were going at high speed the entire route. The average speed (average!!) of our crews for today is 126 kmh. We finished almost synchronically, the same way, as we started - one by one. In today’s stage Sergey Kuprianov is the first among trucks, Anton Shibalov is the second, with time difference of less than a minute. Overall positions didn’t change. We really hope that tomorrow’s special will manifest all the best qualities of our trucks. The stage Chami-Amodjar consists of 414 km of sand routes, sand and dunes! By the way, this year it is much warmer in Africa. Coming to bivouac, our thermometer showed 34 degrees above zero! Tomorrow is going to be hot in every sense of the word!
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