Sotnikov is the fastest driver of the sixth stage in the Silk Way Rally2022

On Tuesday, the rally caravan took its way from the hospitable capital of the Chechen Republic towards Kalmykia. The longest special stage of the twelfth edition of the SWR in 2022 stretched for 485 kilometers, another 50 kilometers fell on the liaisons before the start and after the finish.

In previous days, the drivers constantly complained about the bumpy tracks and the lack of fast straights. And on Tuesday, full-fledged fast tracks appeared in the race program with the ability to accelerate vehicles to the maximum numbers on the speedometer. At the same time, the sixth stage of the Silk Way Rally received the status of a marathon, when crews are prohibited from using the help of their assistance teams and carrying out repairs on their own.

In such scenarios, the riders faced a dilemma: to show a high sports result and not damage the vehicle on the track.

The night before, the sky over Grozny was covered with dark clouds, and the whole bivouac prepared for the first rain since the start of the race, but the weather left the race camp languishing in heat and stuffiness. Meanwhile, in Kalmykia, reports from meteorologists said: on July 12, a heavy rain is expected in the republic, combined with a thunderstorm, hail and squally winds up to 25 m/s. The events of the 2018 rally recurred immediately, when one of the stages had to be shortened due to a flooded track. For the time being, the weather forecast did not come true until the crews began to reach the finish line and fell under heavy rain, which turned the last kilometers of the road into mud baths. This time for the race organizers everything went without emergency situations.

Steppes, semi-deserts, sands and bushes, as well as barkhans - this was the menu of the sixth racing day of the SWR. An interesting fact: the average speed of the crew of Dmitry Sotnikov on the route Grozny - Elista was 92.8 kmh - this is 0.4 kmh faster than that of the off-road leader Vladimir Vasiliev.

Well-chosen tactics often bring results at the marathon stage. Andrey Karginov, who started 15 minutes ahead of Dmitry Sotnikov, lost even the theoretical chances for a podium, so today he played the role of a fast assistance - truck number 303 waited for the second truck and then two KAMAZ-master crews set off together. Only at the finish line Dmitry Sotnikov had to make a stop to change the wheel. Lost 5 minutes did not affect the final data - the current winner of the Silk Way Rally won the second stage in this year's race.

Dmitry Sotnikov, driver of crew No 300: “We went on the second part of the route quite well, the rhythm was good. We tried, raced, but it was very dusty, this dust even got into my mouth. Everything was fine, but 15 kilometers before the finish line, I had to change the rear wheel. It was very hot, but then we went straight and the speed became higher and higher, it reached 140 kmh.”

The crew of Eduard Nikolaev also confidently covered almost 500 kilometers and only once had to start looking for the right direction - it took the navigator only three minutes to return the driver on the road. This hitch aggravated the position in the leading group of the truck standings - Nikolaev after 1700 high-speed kilometers ahead of Sotnikov by only 7 seconds!

Eduard Nikolaev, driver of crew No 302: “Concentration on the road was very important, because we were driving at maximum speed in Kalmykia. You have to be careful on cuttings - ditches and pits may suddenly appear. If you go along the road, then there will be no result, but you need to think about how to drive where others cannot. And it's always a risk. There was a hard ground, it's unusual. In Astrakhan and Grozny off-road, shaking, but the ground is soft, and here were hard bumps, a load on the body. An interesting area was on the dam – it was about 15 kilometers. It was very narrow for trucks, and the slightest twitch of the hand could lead to a ramp into the river. It seemed that you can’t go slowly, and you can’t go fast either. I had to catch the truck all the time. We lost a bit in navigation - we left a little to the side, it took about three minutes. We are grateful to the organizers – an excellent marathon section, a really good one.”

Andrey Karginov, driver of crew No 303: “Today was the longest special stage, with a day without mechanics ahead. Therefore, we had to choose a fast pace and go a little with a margin. We will carry out all the work that bring to the bivouac on our own, we can only rely on those spare parts that took with us. I think that tomorrow everyone will add to the pace. We didn't have any technical problems. We were exhausted on the road, we thought that the finish line would be sooner. At high speed it is very difficult to be behind the wheel for so long.”

The result of the sixth stage for the KAMAZ-master crews was the absence of technical problems, which means only one thing: the racers will limit themselves to routine maintenance at the bivouac.

Continues the competition in the category of the Grand Tour "Following Peter the Great". Participants travel daily to the regions hosting the Silk Way Rally and solve various tasks from the organizers, earning points. The Chinese-Russian and Mongolian-Russian crews consisting of Hou Hongning, Shen Xin and Robert Amatych, as well as Amgalan Avkhia, Battushig Achitsaikhan and Dmitry Nikitin, respectively, perform on modern racing KAMAZ trucks. The results, as in other rally classifications, are too early to sum up - everything will be decided at the finish line in Moscow.

Truck Category. Results of the 6^th Stage

Truck Category. General classification after the 6^th Stage