Dakar | Truck, Stage 6: Karginov signs the hat-trick with Kamaz

Andrey Karginov got a taste for it: in the second ring around Riyadh, the one raced yesterday by motorcycles and quads, the 45-year-old Russian placed his third stage victory with the Kamaz 43509 in the 348 km special.

Andrey kept control of the 6 stage practically from the beginning, leaving only that at the second way point he was overtaken by the race leader, Dmitry Sotnikov who in the end finished with his K5 just 9 seconds behind his teammate, demonstrating the competitiveness threshold of Kamaz trucks that rival on the threshold of the second.

The Russian army has conceded another hat-trick: Eduard Nikolaev completes the podium of the day with the second K5 truck at 45 seconds. The list is missing Anton Shibalov who paid for over ten minutes, ending the day seventh of the stage, but today’s mishap did not endanger the third step of the podium.

It must be said that yesterday the trucks were cut down by a series of penalties imposed by the race direction for non-compliance with a slow zone: the measure affected everyone a bit and, therefore, did not lead to important changes in the general classification which remained. aligned to that of yesterday.

Dmitry Sotnikov arrived at rest day in command with the now statutory ten minutes on Nikolaev: the two Russians with K5s stretch on Shibalov who now pays over 48 minutes, but the novelty is that Janus Van Kasteren has detached himself because he has closed only eighth with a gap of almost 13 minutes in the special. The Dutchman with the Iveco Powerstar of the Petronas De Rooy team is always fourth, the “first of the others”, but his gap from the top exceeds one hour, making the chase for a podium more complicated.

Yesterday Janus accused a problem with the accelerator solved in the race, while today he struggled with the Praga of Ales Loprais who acted as a stopper for a nice piece of special, despite the fact that Iveco had operated the Sentinel several times to signal that it was more rapid. Loprais now sixth at just a minute and a half because Janus also had to deal with a puncture that delayed him. Is the scenario changing? Should Van Kasteren look over his shoulder from the Czech rather than challenge the Kamaz?

Beyond the difficulties of today, at De Rooy they are sufficiently calm, because the goal was to get to the day of rest without upsetting, in the belief that the Iveco has not been exploited to 100% and in the awareness that Van Kasteren will be able to try to launch an attack on Kamaz in the second week to aim for that podium that on paper would be within reach of the Powerstar.

In the top 10 the only difference in the ranking is given by Verstaijnen who moved to eighth place with the Powerstar of the Petronas De Rooy team against Van den Heuvel who fell ninth with his Scania Lonestar.

The general classification
Stage 6 (Riyadh – Riyadh)
special: 348 km; transfer: 214 km; total: 562 km