KAMAZ-master team is preparing to the start of the Silk Way Rally 2021

Traditional press-tour for the Russian mass media and partners of the team was held in Naberezhnye Chelny on June 18. The meeting was coincided to the start of the Silk Way Rally in Omsk.

Pilots of KAMAZ-master team Andrey Karginov and Airat Mardeev made test drives for the mass media representatives, after which the mass media moved to the sports center of the team, where peculiarities of the upcoming race were discussed.

KAMAZ-master racing team will take part in the international Silk Way Rally 2021 in the composition of seven crews.

The competition will take place on the territories of Russia and Mongolia in July 1 - 11. The start is planned in Omsk and finish – in Ulaanbaatar. For 10 stages the contestants will overcome more than 5400 km.

Seven KAMAZ-master crews will take part in the truck category of the rally:

No 500, pilot Anton Shibalov, co-pilot Dmitry Nikitin, mechanic Ivan Tatarinov;

No 501, pilot Dmitry Sotnikov, co-pilot Ruslan Akhmadeev, mechanic Ilgiz Akhmetzianov;

No 504, pilot Eduard Nikolaev, co-pilot Evgenii Iakovlev, mechanic Iskander Romanov;

No 505, pilot Airat Mardeev, co-pilot Dmitry Svistunov, mechanic Vadim Akhmetov;

No 507, pilot Andrey Karginov, co-pilot Andrey Mokeev, mechanic Ivan Malkov;

No 513, pilot Bogdan Karimov, co-pilot Albert Arslanov, mechanic Vladimir Rybakov.

For the Silk Way Rally period the head of the team’s composition, going to the race, will be the eight-time Dakar winner Sergei Savostin (Vladimir Chagin is the head of the Silk Way Rally project and for the rally time will focus on organizational questions, connected with its holding.)

The number of trucks, applied for the race, is explained by necessity of training for young contestants of the team, who became new crew members. Pilot Bogdan Karimov, co-pilot Albert Arslanov, mechanics Iskander Romanov and Vadim Akhmetov, who earlier only took a shot at national championship races, now should try themselves on the international transcontinental rally.

As a reminder, the leading winner of the Silk Way Rally in the truck category is the crew of A.Shibalov.

The Dakar 2021 and the Russian rally-raid championship Gold of Kagan gave a lot of various technical ideas to the team, that will be realized. Every truck will have its own test program on the SWR, it is important to study and test engineering solutions as much as possible. The route from Omsk to Ulaanbaatar will show what novelties will be accepted and implemented in the future. All in all, all works on KAMAZ-43509 is mainly connected with improving reliability and increasing resource on units and aggregates that are already in use.

An absolutely new sport truck K5, which the team is going to perform right before the start of the race, should encapsulate all experience of previous years. Currently assembly works are on the completion phase. The reigning Dakar Rally champion Dmitry Sotnikov is planned to drive this new truck.

According to the team’s deputy director of operations and development Sergei Savostin, designing the new truck, engineers of KAMAZ-master team kept in mind possible modifications in FIA technical regulations, which are planned from 2022 for the World Cup for Cross-Country Rallies. Technical regulations are updated once in 5-7 years and, as a rule, these changes lead to modifications in trucks and essential financial expenses. 2020 went in the mode of consistent negotiations of the team’s specialists and technical stewards, responsible for these articles. Technical director of the team Vladimir Guba takes a big part in this work.

Of course, if the team will be able to prepare the new truck for the race, it will grab an increased attention of fans, but no less interest kindles performance of other famous KAMAZ-master drivers Eduard Nikolaev, Airat Mardeev, Andrey Karginov, Anton Shibalov. Also Sergei Kuprianov’s crew will throw down a gage to off road, who will perform on gas-and-diesel KAMAZ.

International Silk Way Rally 2021. Russia – Mongolia

A ceremonial start of the international Silk Way Rally will be held in Omsk on July 1, 2021.

The route will consist of ten stages and will bring contestants from Omsk through Siberian forests and Altai mountains to Mongolia, crossing it from the west to the east, leading the rally caravan to the Gobi Desert. Introducing contestants with the Mongolian Altai, the track will bring them to the final point of the ten-day rally-marathon – the capital of the Blue Sky the city Ulaanbaatar. In ten days the sports crews will have to overcome seven natural areas – on their way contestants will pass forests, steppes, semi deserts and deserts, mountains, foothills and crossings of many river-beds.

Ceremonial finish of the 11^th edition of the international Silk Way Rally 2021 will be held in Ulaanbaatar on July 11.

This year the route of the unique Silk Way Rally adventure will stretch for five and a half thousand kilometers, almost three and a half thousand of which are special sections.

The program of the eleventh race edition has a few important novelties. First special stages of the rally, which will go through the territory of Russia, will become a kind of a warming-up for the contestants – the total distance of the first three days of the completion will be 329 kilometers. But straight after crossing the border, Mongolian steppes will begin and here the racers will have to give a hundred and ten percent – the distance of the shortest speed section on the territory of Mongolia is 340 km and the longest SS will be 540 km off road.

One more novelty will be a drastic shortage of liaisons – road sections. In 2021 the total length of liaisons will be only 37% of the total rally distance, that is the record in the transcontinental mode of the Silk Way Rally.

There also will be a difficult for contestants marathon stage. Passing such stage, the racers will repair their vehicles on their own, and mechanics and other team members are strictly prohibited to come close to the sport bolides – this day assistance group will stay on another bivouac and the marathon stage will become a kind of a rest day for them.

Apart from the route, with the help of the General partner of the rally Gazprom, organizers of the international Silk Way Rally will offer new conditions for contestants, taking part on vehicles that use natural fuel: natural gas (methane), propane and hydrogen.