On Tuesday, May 29, in Kazakhstan finished the second stage of six-day “Rally Kazakhstan”. On 414 kilometers of the route the race organizers collected the most various areas with impassibility – sand tracks, dune sections, fast steppe straight roads and driving on-course on hillocky surfaces.
“Today we dashed at the stage in one breath, dunes, sand tracks, fast steppes – flat and with ruts – the truck has “swallowed” everything, and we also didn’t make mistakes”, - said after finish pilot of gas-and-diesel KAMAZ Sergey Kuprianov, winning the stage in the truck category with the result of 4h40min42sec.
On the second day of the race organizers added more challenges for crews in the form of not simple navigational traps, upon which navigators, considering high medium speed, had to work very fast. Navigator Aleksandr Kuprianov had to do it precisely and without mistakes. However, things didn’t go smoothly for Andrey Karginov’s crew.
“We went fast. We took a good speed. Fast roads, killing, somewhere narrow trial. 100 km before the finish, protector pieces of the front left wheel started to come off. We stopped, changed it. At that moment the crew of Sergey Kuprianov outran us. After the stop we raised the speed in order to overtake the lost time, caught up Kuprianov, outran him. We made a mistake with the direction and drove a bit aside. Then we again caught up our second KAMAZ and finished almost together”, - this way pilot of crew 301 Andrey Karginov explained his result (04:47:19).
So, two first days of Rally Kazakhstan became a good warming up for contestants. From Wednesday on 30 May complication of competition program is planned. Those, who stay in the race, have to overcome 327 kilometers of sand tracks, there will be a lot of driving in quite high dunes. Those who will delay there, for example because of navigation mistakes, will have to face with a tough heat challenge. Additional challenge will become the fact, that high daytime temperature makes sand loose and difficult to pass.
Photo by Denis Bushkovsky
