An unexpected explanation was given for the shift of Dmitry Sotnikov’s crew in yesterday's start list. An explanation of the situation was made by KAMAZ-master team leader, Vladimir Chagin.
- Unfortunately, this year the organizers have overlaps with the calculation of the results and work of the system. It all began on the last stage before the rest day, when the stage was cut.
In the morning of January 14, before the start we suddenly saw a change in the start list. According to it, Dmitry Sotnikov was supposed to start from the first position in trucks, 16 minutes earlier than the crew of Nikolaev.
Considering the team tactics (to go together and help each other), Sotnikov had to lose about 14 minutes to wait until E.Nikolaev’s crew would catch him up. In order to find out the reason for such a starting modification of the table, I immediately addressed to the race director, who explained that it had happened because of an error in the computer system and assured upon oath to correct the start list. In fact, this was not done and our crews, after 5 minutes of altercations from the judges at the start, went to the special stage with an unfavorable time difference. I immediately went to the organizers for explanations. And here they already showed me new (!) results of the previous day, according to which D. Sotnikov was listed as the winner of the stage, and not the third, as it was before and in fact.
It turned out that he was given back some 28 minutes, for standing in a traffic jam in a canyon. They were really standing there, but for only 1 minute, the green button of Iritrak was pressed by the rules and the signal was recorded. This is an obvious error and system failure. Nevertheless, based on these data, the organizers changed the starting list at night.
In the evening I went again to the race director, demanding to figure out and correct the mistake in 28 minutes. We do not need the wrong time, we play only fair game. To which I heard the answer that they had everything absolutely correct with this return. I do not think that the matter is settled. The only thing I know that if it had not been for these wrong 28 minutes that had confused us at the start of yesterday’s stage, Sotnikov’s crew would not have had to stand yesterday waiting for Nikolaev’s crew, and most likely the results of the stage would have been different.
