The 9th stage gave the participants and photographers first long-awaited big dunes. The height of one dune could be up to the 10-storied building. The main difficulty is that you never know what is behind the dune, what its other side is and you need to choose the correct speed not to get stuck on its top.
The least expected situation happened in the cars today: an absolute leader of the rally Sebastien Loeb diverted from the course, fell into a ditch and turned over on the 84th km of the track. His incautiousness costed the sportsman two hours and a half. Unfortunately this delay doesn’t allow him to lead the general classification. Today the most efficient were Chinese crews, taking second, third and fourth positions in the classification. Only six seconds separated Cyril Despres from the fourth place. The leader of today’s stage was Stephane Peterhansel.
The best truck was Airat Mardeev’s KAMAZ, being 38 seconds faster than Dmitry Sotnikov. Anton Shibalov took the third place with 5 minutes and 9 seconds gap. Right after him goes Eduard Nikolaev, who lost his leading position on the stage due to the puncture.
Quotations:
Airat Mardeev, pilot of KAMAZ-master crew, crew #300:
“Today, as organizers promised, were first sands with 40 km of dunes. They were big with lots of ways to overdrive therefore they were not difficult to pass. Then there were real rally-raid off piste sections. Now our backs hurt a lot. We understood that there we could win back time that we lost to Kolomy, therefore we attacked. Almost the whole day we drove together with Dima. In the dunes we changed places with him twice. In the end we drove after him on the line of his dust because it was impossible to come closer to him. And Dima’s tempo was also very fast, a lot of bumps and holes that were not seen in the dust, therefore we decided not to risk and drove accurately. We also liked the new automatic gear box in dunes: the gear was shifted without time loss but I can’t say definitely if it is better in sands or not.
Dmitry Sotnikov, pilot of KAMAZ-master Team, crew #303:
“The most difficult today was not to overburn before the start as only seeing the mountain and sandy dunes you could overburn psychologically before the start and make a mistake. Therefore we tried to be calm passing the dunes, not to hurry, and we did it in a reliable and stable way. Airat immediately caught us up, tried to overtake but we used his own mistake, drove ahead and then the whole day he saw only our dust. The route was tough today, we tried to pass it without risks.”
Evgeny Yakovlev, co-pilot of KAMAZ-master Team, crew #307:
“There were 35 km of dunes today. Comparing with last year, organizers made the route a bit to the right side, with more holes, more crossings of dunes, so everything went fine. And then almost all 380 km of good, challenging section with holes and bumps. There were a few difficult places in navigation, where roads parted ways, but it wasn’t hard for us to obtain. On approximately 120 km at around the same place as last year we again punctured a tyre. We had to stop to change it. Later the pan was hit. So generally we lost more than 16 minutes.”
Ruslan Akhmadeev, co-pilot of KAMAZ-master Team, crew # 303:
“The special wasn’t easy, we went straight to sands, and took around 10 points. The sands were challenging but we passed them, then Airat Mardeev overtook us, later we overpassed him in sands. Then we were driving first till the very finish. We saw dust ahead but we didn’t reach the cars. We had problems with thermocouple of gas temperature, it didn’t work, there was no signal and the power of engine became lower for 20%. We drove that way for around 300 km. There were very beautiful views, first there were dunes, then interesting plateaus, impassibility, black-on-black gravel with fesh-fesh below, so when you left the road you immediately started to sink into the sand, the speed fell, it was interesting.”
RESULTS OF THE 10th STAGE
Cars:
1. PETERHANSEL Stéphane (Peugeot Sport) – 4h09:22
2. LU Binglong (Baicmotor Racing Team) +0:22
3. LIU Kun (Geely SMG) +2:03
4. HAN Wei (Geely SMG) +2:03
5. DESPRES Cyril (Peugeot Sport) +2:58
Trucks:
1. MARDEEV Airat (КАМАZ-master) – 4h19:50
2. SOTNIKOV Dmitry (КАМАZ-master) +0:36
3. SHIBALOV Anton (КАМАZ-master) +5:09
4. NIKOLAEV Eduard (КАМАZ-master) +9:25
5. KOLOMY Martin (Tatra Buggyra Racing) +11:40
GENERAL CLASSIFICATION:
Cars:
1. DESPRES Cyril (Peugeot Sport) – 26ч31:17
2. HAN Wei (Geely SMG) +44:12
3. MENZIES Bryce (X-Raid MINI) +51:23
4. LAVIEILLE Christian (Baicmotor Racing Team) +52:34
5. AMOS Eugenio (Two Wheels Drive Ford) +1h45:33
Trucks:
1. SOTNIKOV Dmitry (КАМАZ-master) – 27h50:00
2. SHIBALOV Anton (КАМАZ-master) +14:27
3. MARDEEV Airat (КАМАZ-master) +26:30
4. KOLOMY Martin (Tatra Buggyra Racing) +31:30
5. ARDAVICIUS Artur (Astana Motorsport De Rooy Iveco) +1h43:59
6. NIKOLAEV Eduard (КАМАZ-master) +2h26:53
