Today, on 4 January, the contestants of Africa Eco Race overran the equator of the Mauritanian stage, covering 430 km of SS. Once again the winner of the third leg became Andrey Kuprianov from KAMAZ-master Team.
“All in all we understood that today’s special will partially repeat the yesterday’s one. It contained the same part of dunes, impassibility, only the special itself was longer. We tried not to make yesterday’s mistake – not to puncture a wheel. And today everything went smoothly”, - told thepilot.
Bad luck still pursues Sergey Kuprianov’s crew. If the first day of the race the sportsmen lost precious time due to the wheel puncture, today they had to spend an hour and a half to repair the radiator.
“Today we passed sands quite well, but somewhere in that region we gathered rubbish on the radiator fan, or maybe it was broken due to other reasons. Nevertheless, the cooling liquid ran out. We had to stop, change the fan, mend radiator. In a word, we had much work”, - said Sergey Kuprianov.
And yesterday one contestant left the truck category: the only woman-truck driver on Africa Eco Race Elisabete Jacinto from Portugal finished the race earlier due to engine problems.
The Czech pilot Tomas Tomecek (Promet/Czechoslovak team) called it sad but mentioned that anything can happen during the race.
“This is Africa and you never know what can happen on the next km. One can be quite confident at home, but not here, on the race,” – said Tomecek.
Tomorrow the racers will have to pass the special 409 km long.
Africa Eco Race. Results of SS in the Truck Category.
A.Karginov 04:28:17
Т.Tomecek + 42:23
J. Valtr +47:00
М. Kovacs +1:23:03
S. Kuprianov +1:58:57
