Insidious ford on the Silk Way Rally: Vishneusky abandoned the race, Nikolaev damaged the automatic transmission

The ninth stage of the Silk Way Rally along the Volgograd-Lipetsk route became the longest in the 2022 race edition. The bivouacs of the two cities were separated by more than 770 kilometers, while the distance for time was 315 kilometers.

Despite the SWR complexity, until the ninth stage, all contestants in the truck standings remained in the ranks. Even serious breakdowns that the crews had to deal with during the race were repaired on their own right on the track. But on Friday, the day before the end of the marathon, the engine of Aliaksei Vishneuski's truck could not bear.

A deep ford across the Buzuluk River at the 248th kilometer of the special section turned out too insidious. Aliaksei Vishneuski went into the water at a relatively low speed and the engine received a water hammer. Siarhei Viazovich, who came to the rescue, pulled his teammate ashore and the riders together tried to revive the MAZ. Several hours of drying and repair did not lead to a positive effect - crew No 304 had to withdraw from the rally.

The water trap could be the last for the GAZ Raid Sport crews as well. For example, Aleksey Khlebov's truck literally disappeared under the water in front of dozens of spectators, turning into an amphibious vehicle for seconds. With great difficulty, Dmitry Sotnikov and Andrey Karginov got to the other side of the river. The crew of No 303 has repeatedly overcome the most difficult sections in different parts of the world, but today the truck with the index 43509 on the cab encountered technical problems - the main radiator fan broke down from hitting the water. Worst of all, the radiator itself received a hole. Replacement of the failed unit helped eliminate a strong antifreeze leak, and the truck, though leaving a small trace of technical fluid, reached the finish line.

Andrey Karginov, driver of crew No 303: “The special stage was good, fast, winding, challenging. In the road book there was a ford passage, trucks were not allowed to go around. And I thought we dived carefully, even it seemed to me it was too slowly, we could have been faster. We hardly got out of there. After that, we noticed a vibration, stopped, saw that the fan of the main radiator had collapsed. And the radiator was pierced, antifreeze flowed out. We changed the radiator, “healed the wound” as much as we could. But it was still flowing."

After passing the special stage Sergey Kuprianov told about a large number of mistakes they did that ultimately did not become fatal for the crew, and recalled that in 2018 the impressions from driving through the ford were more vivid - then on a gas-diesel truck a pipe was torn off.

For Eduard Nikolaev, everything ended with damage to the gearbox - the remaining almost 80 kilometers of the way, the KAMAZ-master crew drove in fourth gear.

And the penultimate stage of the rally began with a test for navigators. The paths overgrown with tall grass disappeared from the field of view of the racers, and in order to find the right direction, they had to navigate by devices and rely on experience. The drivers had to show all their technical driving skills on the Archedinsky sandy tracks and rally sections. High bushes, that reached the windshield, added headache to the crews - in such conditions it was very easy to damage the front of the truck. As well as in a picturesque tunnel of trees, whose branches were constantly trying to tear off the air intakes of trucks. On Friday there also were enough jumping sections, as well as fast straights in fields dotted with corn.

The best time of the ninth day of the race was shown by Dmitry Sotnikov, the leader of the truck standings. The second was Sergey Kuprianov - this is a record figure for the KAMAZ-master driver at the Silk Way Rally 2022. The difference in the protocol was only 14 minutes. The automatic transmission on Eduard Nikolaev’s truck, which affects the pace, did not prevent the driver from finishing with the third time.

Dmitry Sotnikov, driver of crew No 300: “It was a bit of an endless special stage, very green, we were driving through some brushwood. Trucks couldn't see the road. Today was a real navigation day, very poorly visible tracks, especially for the leading crews. In places it was like in a classic rally: very short, very fast. At first, we even did not hit the trajectory, then we adjusted our rhythm a little and started to hit. We drove carefully to the finish line. In one place it was very narrow, a tunnel of trees, the speed was 20 kmh. The branches got stuck under the screen. We took care of the truck, it would have been critical if we lost the air intake.”

On Saturday, the rally finishes in Moscow. The length of the tenth special stage will be only 120 kilometers, but the next fords in a much greater number can make adjustments to the crews’ positions in the standings.

Truck Category. Results of the 9^th Stage

Truck Category. General classification after the 9^th Stage