“There is no possibility of going to Dakar, but we still have the intrigue” – head of master KAMAZ Nikolaev

Leader and driver of the KAMAZ-master sports team Eduard Nikolaev said there would be some intrigue in the truck category at the Silk Way Rally.

This year, the Silk Road Rally will take place across Russia and Mongolia from July 5-15. The start of the race is planned in Tomsk, the finish is in Ulaanbaatar. KAMAZ-master will be represented by five crews led by Eduard Nikolaev, Dmitry Sotnikov, Andrey Karginov, Bogdan Karimov and Sergey Kupriyanov.

— We are preparing the team for the long-awaited race. We are traveling in five crews. Two cars are almost ready, two others are in the testing phase, the fifth should leave tomorrow. We will have general training near Kazan, where we will ride like in a real race, in order to be well trained from the first stage of the rally.

The cars have a lot of changes. Mongolia with hot climatic conditions awaits us, the cooling system has been improved. The emphasis was on the cabin suspension, after two races we are satisfied.

We analyzed last season, we know that the MAZ-SPORTauto team has become stronger. Now there is no longer any possibility of going to the Dakar, but the intrigue remains with us. There are also guys from the Urals. We have won the Dakar 19 times, we share our experience, other teams come to us and watch how we work.

The task is to strive for results. Each crew undergoes internal testing of equipment, as well as results on the track,” reports the correspondent of , according to Nikolaev’s words.

The current winner of the truck category is Belarusian Sergei Vyazovich from the MAZ-SPORTauto team.

The total length of the Silk Way Rally will be 5,257 km, the length of the special stages will be 2,993 km.

More sports news in our telegram channel .