Rally-raid "Khazar Steppes 2009". Leg One.
Thursday, 06 August 2009 21:50
The 290 kilometres long special stage turned out to be a real climax of the first day of rally-raid "Khazar Steppes", as it was reach for different events.
Talking about overall results, we must mention that speedwise it was Andrey Buryukov, who was feeling most comfortable on steppe roads behind the wheel of Mitsubishi Pajero. Moreover, initially he was handicapped by the dust from Yaroslav Solovjev, who was driving his overhauled Chevrolet buggy for the first time since "Dakar 2009". Having overtaken him with a slight contact between two cars, Biryukov started to build up his advantage over main rivals, being faster at each split. Unfortunately for the driver, 50 kilometres from the finish his car's hood got ripped off, damaging the electricity ground switch. That made the driver stop several times during the rest of distance, losing some time in process. Eventually it was Nart-Time's leader Ruslan Misikov who won the stage, while Solovjev finished in second place.
Alexey Denisov's debut in the Astrakhan land hasn't quite gone successfully. The engine on his Nissan Patrol was overheating, making the G-Force Motorsport driver regularly stop on stage. Having added more water in the radiator at the service in-between two laps through the stage, Alexey kept on fighting, confident both in his own driving and his experienced and reliable co-driver Dmitriy Kozhukhov. Unfortunately, 20 kilometres into the second lap they leaped into a lateral ditch and damaged an axle. It was decided to drive directly to the finish, receiving penalisation (overall 3 hours) for the missed checkpoints. By the way, a new axle was provided at the service by Alexey Yas'kov, who'd been driving well in T2 in a similar Patrol, but hit the oil sump and lost the engine... The crew of Leonid Petrov and Alexander Monin were even more unlucky as they flew into the same ditch, but in addition to car damages both got vertebral compression... Of course they withdrew from the competition, and we wish our fellow competitors the soonest recovery.
A mishap occured at the finish line when some competitors, among which there were such experienced drivers as Yuriy Borovikov, missed the finish gates. So formally they entered the service without going through the finish CP. Hence they were awarded notional time for the stage. Some other crews got time penalties for missing waypoints. Among those were Sergey Savenko, Andrey Biryukov, Viktor Volikov, Ilya Kuznetsov, igor Bondarev, Marat Khismatullin. Of course, all these paperwork changes influenced the overall results...
Ruslan Phurundzhi's first appearance behind the wheel of a racing truck proved unsuccessful. He was aiming to use the "Khazar Steppes" race as a test ground for his participation in the "Silk Way" marathon. But driving a truck in raids demands special skills which Ruslan seems to lack at the moment - he pushed his MAN off the road, broke an axle and something else in the vehicle. The crew was unhurt. Two KAMAZ crews from Turkmenistan, though also going through education stage, were in contrast very cautios and characterised by the team's management as making a steady progress.
Unofficial results SS2 (top-3):
1. R.Misikov -2.31.36
2. Y.Solovjev -2.42.12
3. B.Novitskiy -2.45.39