Two big sand drifts “Africa” and “Big Brother” should mix traditional terrific Astrakhan route of the second race day. However, the planned route had to be corrected during the race. Its length was cut from 280 km to 226 km. And unfortunately the reasons were not very positive. All sportsmen were still on the track when the race officials announced that the race finished on “Africa” sector because of the incident on “Big Brother” sand drift. One spectator got under wheels of MAZ #307 on “Big Brother” and broke his arm. He was helicoptered to the hospital. The race director Vladimir Korolev also told that the day results would be tabulated till “Africa” sand drift, because the race went well before that point.
All KAMAZ-master crews performed well, apart from a breakdown of pneumatic compressor on the truck of Eduard Nikolaev. However, only 4 hours were spent on its repair.
Planned tests of Dmitry Sotnikov’s truck suspension continue. The crew time after time stops on the track in order to change adjustments of suspension and test it in different modes.
Russian-Chinese crew of KAMAZ-master Hou Hongning – Shen Xin – Andrey Mokeev #305 has a target to cooperate together effectively, solve language barrier problems, and learn peculiarities of the truck. Two months are left before the Silk Way Rally start, revived this year with the help of Gazprom. According to the team leader Vladimir Chagin, we should make the most of every minute of the competition and preparation process.
The classification of the second day:
1. Mardeev A. (КАМАZ-master, 3:15:46)
2. Karginov A. (КАМАZ-master, 3:20:04)
3. Vasilevsky А. (MAZ-SPORTauto, 3:23:15)
4. Vyazovich S. (MAZ-SPORTauto, 3:29:22)
5. Shibalov А. (КАМАZ-master, 3:29:22)
6. Hongning Hou (КАМАZ-master, 3:3019)
7. Vishnevsky А. (MAZ-SPORTauto , 3:43:00)
8. Sotnikov D. (КАМАZ-master, 6:30:00)
9. Nikolaev E. (КАМАZ-master, 6:30:00)
The top three Mardeev, Karginov, Vasilevsky took the 2nd, 3rd and 4th positions in the general classification.
Quotations
Airat Mardeev, #301 pilot
“The route is very challenging – our favorite but hard impassibility, that we missed, but very soon had enough of it. The special was interesting, very demanding to vehicles and physical preparation. On SS like that you can check vehicle construction, its reliability and crew’s endurance. We started immediately after Eduard, on yesterday briefing we chose those positions in order to start together. The reason was to compare two kinds of trucks: bonnet and cabover. We drove quite well, but unfortunately Eduard had some problems and stopped. So, face-to-face battle didn’t happen and the rest of the route we drove alone. We saw a lot of jeeps, some of them outrun immediately. There were some jeeps stuck in the sand, some of them were broken. The navigation was a bit challenging today and navigators had to work hard. There were a lot of unclear places and we were leading.”
Aleksander Kuprianov, #302 navigator
“The roads are twisted, they cross in a random way and from one place they can lead to various directions. On yesterday briefing Aidar Belyaev showed us one position in the road book where we should be accurate. We got lost exactly in that place, as though he saw it in a crystal ball. Fortunately, we found the correct direction and the right reference quite fast and continued our way.”
