OREANDA-NEWS. January 11, 2009. The win of the crew on KAMAZ № 501 on the sixth stage of the rally Dakar-2009 became the 45th victory on the stages for the fivefold champion of Dakar Vladimir Chaguin from the KAMAZ-master team in his Dakar biography! And it is his second triumph on the rally-raid 2009.

Another KAMAZ driver, also the Dakar winner – Firdaus Kabirov – took the lead in the race. Meanwhile his victory on the previous fifth stage was also “jubilee” – the twentieth one.

The leader of the off-road event Naser Al Attiya is disqualified for non-observance of the rally route. According to the Qatari driver, it was his deliberate and forced deed: his BMW’s engine overheated to 120 degrees. And when the engine failed the racer began making detours round the sand dunes where there were obligatory hidden control points to be passed. And the punishment for this is disqualification.

Luc Alphand, the French winner of Dakar-2006, left the race having run 12 km on the high-speed section. Giles Pekar, the navigator of his Mitsubishi, is hospitalized because of his health problems.

One of the pilots of Mitsubishi Lancer Racing vehicles Juan Roma (“Nani”) said that it would be nice if at least one vehicle of his team managed to get to Valparaiso among the leaders.

In a word, the racers and organizers of the rally are in for a difficult day before the long-awaited day of rest in Chile.