BUENOS-AIRES, January 11 (Itar-Tass) —— Another Russian crew of the KAMAZ-Masters team piloted by Airat Mardeyev dropped from the Dakar-2012 race over an engine failure on Tuesday, the KAMAZ-Masters team said in a press release.
“In this respect, we decided to dispatch a technical assistance truck on the route to evacuate Mardeyev’s truck to an assistance bivouac to make a repairs, if it is possible, so that his truck would be able to drive to Lima and then to Naberezhnye Chelny after passing the ferry line,” a seven-time Dakar winner Vladimir Chagin, who works as a coach and a manager during the current Dakar race, said.
Mardeyev’s truck engine failed at the 302nd kilometre of the first special stage. “Ilgizar Mardeyev’s fast technical assistance truck stopped at Airat Mardeyev’s truck, but as the repairs was impossible on the route, the truck kept driving on the route in order to be helpful to Artur Ardavichus and Andrei Karginov’s crews. It is quite rarely when the engines produced at the Tutayev engine making plant fail. Unfortunately, this happened during the current Dakar race,” Chagin went on to say.
However, the Russian crew of the KAMAZ-Masters team made of Karginov, Devyatkin and Mokeyev is ranked fifth after the special stage.
Meanwhile, this is already the second case when the engine of the KAMAZ-Masters truck with the Russian crew failed. Eduard Nikolayev’s truck crew heard some strange noises in the engine at a distance of 25 kilometres short of an assistance bivouac in the Atacama Desert on January 8. The maintenance workers keep dissembling the engine.