Last Kazakhstan Special and First Chinese Bivouac
This day was rich in impressions, but it didn’t allow to forget about the main intrigue of the day: about last stage on the territory of Kazakhstan. This special seemed like just a formal one, but it brought many surprises to the rally participants. Nobody wanted to lose time at this short and fast stage, everybody was fighting for seconds, therefore complicated navigation could turn into a serious problem for many. On arrival at the bivouac, the sportsmen were passionately discussing this short section, shared their impressions, comparing today’s special with continuous ups and downs like on a plane, and were happy that they had managed with driving in such difficult conditions.
American Bryce Menzies was first today in the car category, showing an excellent result and leaving behind Cyril Despres who lost him a minute and a half. Sebastien Loeb finished third today with a minute and 37-second gap, but keeping his lead in the standings.
KAMAZ-master crews has today shown an excellent result and made their fans happy by taking all first 4 positions in the table. Showing the best time in his category, Dmitry Sotnikov strengthened his lead in the overall. All trucks have shown a stable fight today – the time difference between first and 10th truck (Gerard de Rooy) was only 5 minutes.
Dmitry Sotnikov, pilot of KAMAZ-master Team, crew No. 303: «China is a traditionally hospitable country, safety is very well organized on the route – every crossroad is secured by a lot of people, they gave us a warm welcome. Even on the territory of the bivouac there are a lot of people. We passed the border quite fast, we don’t have any complaints, the race organizers did a great job. We are happy to see the summer, as this year it isn’t warm in Russia, so we will get warm here. The special was interesting today: everybody was flying, there are a lot of holes, therefore we've 'treaded on eggshells' today, but nevertheless once we jumped higher than usual and didn’t notice how we touched the sump: there was an oil leakage, but it didn’t influence us, we didn’t notice anything, we didn’t get a loss of pressure, and in general all characteristics were OK, therefore we continued our drive and only at the finish noticed a little leakage already repaired for now.»
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