Karginov got stuck in sands and lost more than an hour on the 4th stage of the Dakar 2022

Rains are usual for Saudi Arabia in January, with more than 20mm of rainfall on average in the first month of the new year - the highest rate in a year. And the weather regularly interferes with the Dakar. At the traditional evening briefing the rally-marathon organizers warned about wet and viscous sands and dunes, as well as puddles on the track and in river beds, which could be fraught with threat to vehicles and even to the health of riders.

It was the very rainfall “set” that should have been on the route of the rally caravan from Al-Qaisumah to Riyadh. The fourth stage of the Dakar 2022, taking into account the liaison (707 kilometers), became one of the longest in the current edition of the race, while the special stage of 465 kilometers confidently topped the Dakar rating of 2022.

On Wednesday the course for the remaining two hundred and more participants in the world's most extreme race ran from the north to the south of Saudi Arabia. Leaving behind them nearly a thousand combat kilometers and three special stages covered with sands, representatives of moto and car categories headed to mountainous regions in the central part of the Middle East state. The road from the Ad-Dahna Desert, better known as Small Nefud, took the adventurers across the eastern border of the Najd Plateau to the Jabal Tuvaiq mountain range.

KAMAZ-master crews, which took the lead from the first day, once again opened the start of the truck classification. Relying on the roadmap and experience of the navigators, the drivers coped quite easily with a large number of non-parallel and barely visible tracks on the large plateau, and the 200-kilometer gravel high-speed section allowed them to maintain a high pace throughout the first half of the special stage - the average speed on this segment was about 120 kmh at the maximum permitted 140 kmh for trucks.

Taking the first line in the general classification (11th result in the overall after three stages) Dmitry Sotnikov showed the best result at the 40 km mark, after which the leadership passed to his teammate Eduard Nikolaev. The Dutch Janus van Kasteren made an impetuous attack on the KAMAZ team, who became the third according to the results of yesterday: the representative of Gerard de Rooy's team literally followed at tail for the first 200 kilometers, yielding less than a minute to the five-time winner of the Dakar and at some point showed the second time. However, more experienced Eduard Nikolaev, who returned to the wheel after missing the 2021 race edition, did not give up his position and, appearing in dunes, was able to increase a comfortable gap.

In terms of navigation the most difficult place in the route of the fourth special stage was its final part after the second neutralization zone. The rally caravan was awaited by cunning dried-up river beds with vegetation, that were viscous after heavy rains. A wrong choice of direction could lead the crews away from the correct course or leave them in a shaky trap, which entailed a serious loss of time in the struggle for positions in the standings. Again, the riders were able to accelerate to maximum on the final kilometers of the distance.

Another podium of Russians became a good birthday present for the head of KAMAZ-master team and seven-time winner of the Dakar, Vladimir Chagin, who turned 52 on Wednesday. The crew of Eduard Nikolaev showed a time of 4 hours 14 minutes 46 seconds, the second result was of Dmitry Sotnikov (+3 minutes 35 seconds), and the third – of Anton Shibalov (+5 minutes 35 seconds), who managed to make the finishing burst and be 9 seconds ahead of Janus van Kasteren.

Eduard Nikolaev, driver of crew No 505: “Everything is fine, the result is good. We drove in a smooth and steady way, many contestants had problems with navigation - they were looking for a hidden point. We did not have any questions with this. Today is Vladimir Gennadievich's birthday. We wanted to present him a good result, and I think we succeeded ”.

Dmitry Sotnikov, driver of crew No 500: “Today was a high-speed day and a lot of navigation. We were driving first to the 276^th kilometer, then Andrey overtook us. But after five kilometers, he stopped due to gearbox problems. We punctured the wheel after, let several crews pass ahead, including Karginov, who continued to go. It became very difficult 90 kilometers before the finish line: difficult navigation, channels with a lot of mud and poor visibility. We managed to go around the riverbed along the edge and not fall into the trap. We overtook several cars, and the rest of our guys followed us."

Anton Shibalov, driver of crew No 501: “An interesting day in terms of the landscape, and the change of the route is good. Today there was everything - dunes, fast roads, stones, channels, difficult navigation. The special stage passed smoothly, without stops. Janus van Kasteren provided a good competition in terms of pace, and we managed to get ahead of him."

As Eduard Nikolaev noted a day earlier, when everything is going well and there is no reason for concern, Dakar is ready to present an unpleasant surprise. This happened with the crew of Andrey Karginov. First, the 45-year-old driver, who took the lead from Nikolaev at the 200 km mark, quickly began to lose time - the reason was a problem with the automatic transmission: the truck could go at a speed of no more than 115 kmh, and spontaneous gear shifting was observed. And already at the 421^st kilometer KAMAZ No 509 was captured by the river channel itself - the coating under the wheels turned out too viscous, and it was possible to get out of the trap thanks to the help of the Lithuanian crew led by Vaidotas Pashkevicius. The loss in time was more than an hour for Karginov.

Andrey Mokeev, co-driver of crew No 509: “What can I say, the day turned out fun ... In the first half we started having problems with the gearbox. At first, the gears spontaneously shifted, and in the dunes neutral gear occasionally switched on. This happened spontaneously and did not depend on shaking and jumping. And 40 kilometers before the finish line, we got stuck in the mud due to the gearbox malfunctioning. We stood still for over an hour until the guys on Tatra helped us. We will certainly thank them at the bivouac."

In the general classification Karginov dropped to the seventh place. Van Kasteren is now fourth, Martin van den Brink made a jump from ninth to sixth. One of the contenders for the podium, Martin Macik and Ignacio Casale, dropped out of the top 10, having lost more than an hour due to stops.

The 44^th edition of the Dakar Rally will continue on Thursday with a 346-kilometer loop stage in the vicinity of the Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh.

Truck category. Results of the 4th stage. Top 10

Truck category. General Classification after the 4^th stage. Top 10.