Stage 8: FIRST ENCOUNTER WITH THE DESERT

The racing caravan of the rally "Silk Road-2017" finally moved to China – today the first stage took place on the territory of the Middle Kingdom. Moreover, the participants almost immediately visited the local desert – of the two and a half hundred kilometers of the special stage laid between Karamay and Urumqi, three quarters passed among the dunes and sand fragments. And for the crews of the Belarusian Maz-Sportavto team, the most difficult part of the marathon is coming – battles in the desert require accurate piloting, error-free navigation, maximum reliability of Racing Equipment… And a little more luck will never hurt anyone!

Two and a half hundred kilometers-it seems not so much by the standards of rally raids, especially compared to the stages, which have 400-500 km of combat Distance. However, in the desert, every kilometer covered should be considered at least two-the load on Crews and equipment is usually enormous.… It is necessary to be constantly on guard – not to fall into a hole, not to fall off a dune, not to lose sight of the few available landmarks, to recognize the state of the sand surface in time, to monitor the state of equipment and tires, and a great many other things.… And all this must be done in a multi-ton car, rushing at full speed along the dead tracks (if there are any at all!) or just somewhere in the "direction"!

Contrary to all fears (still today is an odd number, when Maz-Sportauto is "traditionally" faced with troubles on the track), the first Chinese stage for the MAZ-Sportauto team was quite successful-all three crews finished without unnecessary adventures. The best was the crew under the control of Sergey Vyazovich, who showed the sixth time at the stage. Not far behind him was the crew under the control of Alex Vishnevsky, who overcame the special stage with the eighth result. In the overall standings of the marathon, there were changes – if Sergey Vyazovich is still seventh in the race, then Alexey Vishnevsky was ahead of his colleague Alexander Vasilevsky and became tenth.

 

Sergey Vyazovich (304): 

"The stage passed without excesses. The road has changed radically-off-road, sands-so we drove all at our own steady pace, without risk, without any special attempts to attack. We have big gaps in front and behind. We decided not to experiment with finding the pace until the day of rest, we drove in order to catch our breath and not burden the mechanics with extra work. There we will already work out tactics for continuing the race.
It's actually very difficult when every day we're not what we ride at the pace of the leaders. We of the four or five sections went first on the splits all the time, but managed to win only one special stage, while losing about four and a half hours of time. Hard…
It's hard, but I need to lead the team, I can't lose heart myself, and the guys show that it's hard. 
We continue, and given that only half of the race has passed, in that time you can get so many problems, then where is the probability that in the second half of the race the other participants will not have so many problems? We can not say that someone can already be written off-we have repeatedly seen for ourselves. Therefore, we will go to the end and fight until the last kilometer of the finish stage." 
 

Now the racing caravan has arrived in Urumqi, where it will take a short break-tomorrow a rest day is planned, which will be devoted to restoring strength and putting Racing Equipment in order. And on Monday morning, the final part of the Silk Road 2017 rally starts– six more stages on the way to the final in Xi'an!