06/01/06 - Zouerat > Atar - 499 km - 521 km

At the seventh rally “Lisbon-Dakar 2006” stage a Holland team of Hans Stacey on MAN become the winner having overtaken Firdaus Kabirov for 2 min 29 sec and the Brazilian Andre de Azevedo for 10 min 14 sec.

In overall truck ranking Vladimir Tchaguine as before remained the leader and was 1 h 22 min 28 sec ahead of Firdaus Kabirov and 1 h 31 min 25 sec ahead of Hans Stacey, who displaced the Czech Carel Lopraise.

Navigational finesse was of great use that day. Fully impassable roads of a leg consisted of three sandy massifs of 80 km in length each of which had all kinds of grounds and dunes height. The major obstacle had its own name El-Bied.

The night from 5 to 6 January was very tense for KAMAZ-Master team mechanics. A number of preventive measures for trucks was also supplemented by the replacement of Kabirov truck’s reduction gear.

At 290 km Vladimir Tchagine’s truck stopped. The reason for it was not clear for a long time: there was no connection with “IriTrack” system that enables real-time monitoring of positions and tracking of competitors. It gave an objective picture of the route not always.

Finally “IriTrack” started working. KAMAZ of Firdaus Kabirov the first passed CP2 of 355 special stage kilometres. Right after him, 14 minutes behind, followed Stacey. At last it became known that Tchaguine passed CP2 after an hour and 10 sec behind Kabirov. But there were 144 km more to the finish line.

“We were the first on the route, - Semion Yakoubov, - At 290 km we climbed up the dune, rolled over and saw in front a huge crater. The truck implacably fell on its right side at the crater edge and buried into sand. We started digging a hole to level the truck. Then we used the jack and gradually the truck stood on its four wheels. When it was left 15 km to the finish the tire of a left rear wheel broke into pieces. Still we went ahead and came in.”

Saturday, 07 January 2006