All three entrants from the KAMAZ-Master Team at the Dakar-2009 Rally are among the five strongest, based on the results of the second leg, which ended on Sunday in Argentina. For the first time in its history, the Dakar Rally changed its venue and it is taking place in South America instead of Africa. Last year, the 30th anniversary event was cancelled due to a terrorist threat, so, this year, the organisers took the 31st race to Latin America. Racers from more than 50 countries in all kinds of vehicles will cover 9,000 kilometres, 6,000 of which are high-speed sections. The 14-leg route lies through eleven Argentine provinces and three regions in Chile. The prize-award ceremony for the winners is scheduled to be held in Buenos Aires on 18 January.
Thus far, the results of the second leg show that the award candidates in the truck category include the Russian KAMAZ team, a seven-time winner of the Dakar Rally. The crew of Firdaus Kabirov came second after the Dutch, and the two other KAMAZ crews brought up the rear among the first five. Right from the very start, the participants in the rally, as they were unaccustomed to the stony track-surface as compared to the sandy conditions found in Africa, reported frequent breakdowns, engine malfunctions, and punctured tyres. The captain of the KAMAZ-Master Team, Semyon Yakubov, hopes the Russian crews will do well. “We have improved to perfection the shock-absorbers and introduced serious changes to the suspension brackets, which guarantees smooth movement at high speeds”, he said. Consequently, the Russian drivers from Naberezhny Chelny in Tatarstan, where KAMAZ trucks are produced, have a good chance to bring the number of Dakar Rally victories to eight.
5 January 2009
Vyacheslav Solovyov
Voice of Russia World Service
http://www.ruvr.ru/main.php?lng=rus&q=96505&cid=25&p=05.01.2009 (in Russian)
