The last time Siberia was represented on the map of the International Silk Way Rally in 2021, when the race started from Omsk. In July 2024, dozens of crews will set off to conquer thousands of kilometers of off-road terrain from another city of Russia's largest region - Tomsk, which celebrated its 420th anniversary a month earlier.
The KAMAZ-Master team is the record holder of the Silk Way Rally in terms of the number of victories, the team from Naberezhnye Chelny has ten of them. And together with the status of the international leader of rally-raids, the fans expect the highest results from the crews.
Preparations for the main start of the year for the KAMAZ-master team have been underway since last summer - since the finish of the Silk Way Rally 2023. During this time, the sport trucks have undergone the necessary modernization aimed at improving key performance indicators and increasing the reliability of units and assemblies.
On Wednesday, July 3, the vehicles with the recognizable blue livery and KAMAZ inscription on the front of the cab passed the final test before the start of the Silk Way Rally. The test site was a small section of less than two kilometers, which included a fast straight in the field and narrow tracks in the woods, allowing the drivers to get used to the harsh conditions of the upcoming 11-day marathon.
On Thursday, all participants of the Silk Way Rally 2024 had to pass administrative checks and scrutineering. KAMAZ-Master crews were the first numbers in the organizers' schedule, and in a short period from 8 to 9 am local time (or from 4 to 5 am Moscow time) they received the necessary stamps in their documents. The procedure perfected over the years by participation in the races. This time it was characterized by additional medical checks of cognitive abilities. Next, the crews had to visit the technical commissioners. But even here there were no surprises - all KAMAZ-Master trucks were allowed to start the race.
"Administrative and technical checks are an important component of any race, without which it is impossible to go to the start of the rally. This is, first of all, a question of the safety of the participants themselves on special stages and on public roads, on which we drive dozens of kilometers every day. Administrative checks went on as normal, the only moment we encountered for the first time was a medical check of each crew member's cognitive abilities. Due to the tight schedule we were almost late for technical inspections, and here we have a request to the organizers to put a little more time for passing the AP or to make a bigger time gap for each crew. The technical inspections also went normally, our trucks were inspected, checked and cleared to take part in the race," said Dmitry Nikitin, co-pilot of the KAMAZ-master team.
Five crews of the KAMAZ-master team will take part in the rally's truck event:
Crew #302: Eduard Nikolaev (pilot) - Evgeny Yakovlev (co-pilot) - Dmitry Avdeev (mechanic);
Crew #303: Dmitry Sotnikov - Ruslan Akhmadeev - Ilgiz Akhmetzyanov;
Crew #305: Andrey Karginov - Ivan Malkov - Danil Telepov;
Crew #306: Bogdan Karimov - Dmitry Nikitin - Almaz Akhmedov;
Crew #308: Sergey Kupriyanov - Alexander Kupriyanov - Ivan Tatarinov.
Our team will be represented at the race by three models of sport trucks. Eduard Nikolaev's crew will start the rally on the unique bonneted KAMAZ-43509K. The crews of Dmitry Sotnikov, Andrey Karginov and Bogdan Karimov will drive K5 family vehicles - KAMAZ-435091. In a short period of time these vehicles have proved themselves to be the best off-road vehicles, having brought the team two victories at the main rally-raid races of the planet - the Dakar and the Silk Way rallies. Sergey Kupriyanov, as in previous years, will drive a unique vehicle using gas-diesel mixture as fuel.
Chinese driver Hou Hongning, who came fifth in the cargo classification at the end of the last year's the Silk Way Rally, will continue to drive Kamaz truck, but this time the crew of the One Belt, One Road team will be represented in the Grand Tour category. Together with the pilot in the cabin will be Chinese Zhang Ya and Russian Sergey Shportko.
In addition to KAMAZ-master, three other teams will fight for the prize-winning places. MAZ-SPORTavto will be represented by three crews under the control of the current winner of the Silk Way Rally Sergey Vyazovich, as well as Alexey Vishnevsky and Vitaly Myrulev; UralMotorSport team has increased its representation at the race to two crews - Yuri Naiman and Alexey Popov; traditionally two crews - Mikhail Shklyaev and Vladimir Moiseyev - will go to the start of GAZ Raid Sport.
The route of the Silk Way 2024 rally-marathon consists of eleven stages and runs through the territory of Russia and Mongolia, starting in Tomsk and finishing in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia. The total length of the competition route will be 5243 kilometers, 2992 of which are sport special stages.
In the morning of July 5, more than 100 athletes will be waiting for the first stage of 20 kilometers in the suburbs of Tomsk, and in the evening - the ceremony of the solemn start at Lenin Square on the bank of the Tom River.
