On Sunday, 24th of September the baja “Simbirsky trakt” has finished in Uliyanovsk. 190-km special stage laid under quick off-road tracks could hardly ever change the situation in a general classification of the rally. Nevertheless, the task was set before the Kamaz crews to change the results of the race in their favor. And I must say that KAMAZ-master crews did their best to do so, showing better times at checkpoints than even the leaders of the traditionally faster passenger car classification.
The crew of Dmitry Sotnikov, which are the closest to the Belorussian leader Sergey Vyazovich in a truck category after two days race, started today later at 3 minutes of MAZ participant, but he reached him at the middle of the distance. However, in a dense dust, that make visibility close to zero and in conditions of narrow, constant changing of the direction of the roads between agricultural fields, unfortunately he was not able to overpass the rival. As a result, Dmitry Sotnikov was 2 minutes and 28 seconds faster than Sergey Vyazovich, but only 25 seconds short of leading the general classification after three days of racing. Third, fourth, fifth and sixth places in the race were taken respectively by the crews of other Kamaz drivers Bogdan Karimov, Anton Shibalov, Eduard Nikolaev and Andrey Karginov.
The remaining positions in the cargo standings were distributed as follows: Alexey Vishnevsky (MAZ-SPORTavto) - seventh, Yuri Naiman (URAL MOTORSPORT) - eighth, Mikhail Shklyaev and Alexey Khlebov (both GAZ RAID SPORT) - respectively ninth and tenth, and closed the truck standings Vitaly Murylev (MAZ-SPORTavto).
