From the 19th till the 22nd of May Archeda Baja will again be held on the sandy area of Archeda-Don territory, as a stage of the Russian Rally-Raid Cup and Championship of the Volgograd region. The competition will pass under the aegis of the Russian Motorsport Federation, Motorsport Federation of the Volgograd region, within the project Archeda Terra Extreme. Technical organizer of the competition has become public establishment of the Volgograd region “The Youth Initiative” (Volgograd region, Frolovo). KAMAZ-master team will be represented by four crews on the race.
“Volgograd stage of the Russian Championship Archeda Baja will become the first competition of the team after the passed in January Dakar, - told Eduard Nikolaev, who acts as a teamleader on the race. – Crews of Andrey Karginov, Airat Mardeev, Sergei Kuprianov and Bogdan Karimov have been applied for the race. In the truck category will also take part teams MAZ-SPORTauto, GAZ Raid Sport, so fans won’t be bored. May for us will become a kind of a prologue to the Silk Way Rally, which will be held from 6 to 16 July.”
The sports program of the race has started with the 21-kilometer prologue on 20 May, then there will be the second stage of the race with three big loops 80-kilometer each, the menu of the third day proposes 2 slightly modified 80-kilometer loops.
About preparation to the start of the new season told the Deputy Director on production Sergei Savostin: “There was a lot of work in this spring season. To the start of the Archeda Baja the third racing K5 truck was built for Andrey Karginov in the production shop of the team. Within our joint cooperation with Gazprom PTC a new gas-and-diesel truck was built, on which Sergei Kuprianov’s crew will perform. On the Archeda Baja the truck will be tested in the racing drive mode. The period after the Dakar is characterized by import substitution. Now we will concentrate on building new bonnet team truck. Hopefully we will manage to prepare it by the start of the Silk Way Rally. AiratMardeevsupervisesworksonit.”
Short training session of the team in the Astrakhan region, that was held immediately ahead of the start in the Volgograd region early this week, helped to carry initial adjustments on the new trucks. Therefore, a short prologue of Archeda Baja didn’t bring difficulties to any KAMAZ crew. The special stage was a quite fast sandy track, snaking along bumpy sandy surface. Sharp 90-degree turns sometimes demanded sudden slow-downs and fast speeding up almost from zero. On curves high sangars of the road threatened with turn-overs even for trucks, therefore today experienced crews tried to be more careful than fast. Those who neglected it, faced bad destiny – for example, one buggy stopped on the track with his rear suspension torn off. Anotherunluckycrew, usingracingslang, “caughtaroof”.
-The special stage went quite well, we looked forward for races, told Airat Mardeev after the finish. – The prologue was more for buggies – narrow roads, where it was hard for the truck to go, you didn’t enroll everywhere, you had to make a curve, cut, go through the bushes. I had a big break, did not go to the Dakar this winter. And today I was nervous at the start, but enrolled at once. My crew is absolutely new – if I drove together with the navigator Albert Arslanov last year, then Aleksandr Zhilkin is debuting on races. It is apparent that he has a lack of experience but he is learning. Itisforthispurposewecamehere.
Sergei Kuprianov said that his new gas-and-diesel truck amazing:
“The new gas-and-diesel KAMAZ truck gives wonderful impressions, but now it is important to understand how the truck works, and to raise up the tempo in the race only after it. These were first kilometers on our absolutely new gas-and-diesel truck with the new engine. We decided not to hurry anywhere, to drive carefully, not to make mistakes. It is better to accelerate slowly during the race, because for us the main task is to understand how the truck works. First impressions are amazing. We see how the dynamics of usage of gas-and diesel engine changes. The track is not traditional for rally-raids, there are a lot of bushes and tracks in the underbrush, but there will be more sands and open spaces, which are created for KAMAZ”.
Andrey Karginov noted, that KAMAZ contestants try to see and make cuts, as suspension allows to “swallow” harsh bumps, inevitably follow such driving style. But today such tactics was untenable due to the short special, and moreover it was full of bushes and small trees that limit the sight and threaten to crush the windscreen.
