OREANDA-NEWS. September 16, 2010. Three crews of the KAMAZ-master team continue leading the race, the racers of another crew are trying to catch up with their teammates.

Silk Way 2010 Rally, 3rd Stage Vyazma – Lipetsk

The third stage 380 km long was started early in the morning yesterday. A special leg 210 km long under the name “Beautiful Dream” was laid in picturesque hilly valleys of the central part of Russia and partly passed through “historical” roads which keep wheel tracks from racing vehicles of Paris – Moscow – Beijing legendary marathon 1992, the first off-road race of the Dakar series held on the territory of Russia.

As pilot Eduard Nikolaev noted, that rally course with a very difficult navigation was really “a navigator’s dream”. The track passed along the borders of fields of Central Chernozemye (“Black Earth” belt); slopes and fords followed one after another. And it was against a background of a view “native” for the Russian participants – small trees, forests, fields and… an enormous number of spectators on the race track.

Today all three leaders of the rally – the crews of the KAMAZ-master team with pilots Vladimir Chaguin, Firdaus Kabirov and Eduard Nikolaev – for different reasons stopped on the course. Firdaus Kabirov’s crew was delayed on the way because of an accident of Mitsubishi with pilot Aleksey Berkut. The KAMAZ racers helped the Russian crew. At the same time, a loss of time by no means influenced the position of the crewof Kabirov who showed the best time on a special leg having left behind the Czech crew of Ales Loprais and his teammates – Vladimir Chaguin’s crew. A wheel of Chaguin’s KAMAZ was punched, and he had to stop and replace it. Eduard Nikolaev’s crew rounding up the top three prize winners lost several seconds because of careless overcoming of one of water obstacles. The racers had to spend about two minutes to release pressure in wheels. After that the high-powered KAMAZ easily got out of “the water captivity”.

But these problems didn’t let the competitors oust the crews of the KAMAZ-master team from the top three positions in the overall rating. With the fourth result, Ilghizar Mardeev’s crew managed to go up one position and leave behind the crew of Austrian Franz Echter on the MAN truck. Now about 40 seconds separate the KAMAZ racers from the fourth position of Ales Loprais.

Two other crews of the young members of the KAMAZ-master managed to keep their positions. Andrey Karginov showed his best sixth result and got close to Franz Echter. Ayrat Mardeev stays on the eleventh position. Journalist Andrey Leontiev having stably passed a special sector moved up one position.

Today the participants of Silk Way 2010 rally will go on the track of the fourth stage. 302 high-speed kilometers of a special leg “Archeda” and the first dunes are in store for them.