The desert does not recognize authorities
Participants in the most prestigious Paris-Dakar motor marathon in the world completed eight stages. A third of the distance is behind us, which brought many surprises. Only in the truck class the competition is taking place almost in full accordance with pre-launch forecasts. Russian KamAZ trucks are confidently in the lead.

The drivers of the KamAZ-Master team themselves say that, although they have seen a lot during their careers, the starting section of the current Paris-Dakar rally, which took place mainly in the Atlas Mountains, seemed incredibly difficult to them. Rocky roads sometimes wore down the “eternal” Michelin tires to the cord, and welding work after the next special stage dragged on overnight: it was necessary to almost completely restore the broken car... And this was at a very fast overall pace of the rally: heavy trucks often accelerated to 160 kilometers per hour. “With such speed and such terrain of the route, you cannot relax for a minute,” said Vladimir Chagin, the most experienced KAMAZ pilot, the other day. “The slightest carelessness can become fatal.” And his navigator Aidar Belyaev added to what was said that navigation is extremely complex even by Dakar standards, you have to carefully study the smallest details of the road book.
Vladimir Chagin looked into the water. His crew was in the lead for a long time, and it seemed that they would retain first place on the sands that replaced the mountains in Mauritania. But one single mistake by Chagin turned his teammate Firdaus Kabirov into the marathon favorite. However, fortunately, everything is going to the point that these two crews will compete for the title of winner in the “Trucks” category: the Russians’ closest rival, Brazilian Andre De Azevedo, in a Czech Tatra, is quite far behind.
There are still three Russian crews among the rally participants in the Passenger Car class. But neither Vladislav Rakityansky, nor Alexander Khrol, nor Yuri Pozhidaev aspire to high places. Ahead are those on whom bets were initially placed—representatives of the Schlesser and Mitsubishi teams.
The main surprise is that the world's best marathon rally driver, Jean-Louis Schlesser, is currently far from the top three. The Frenchman, who started very well, was let down by the seventh stage, in which he broke his car. The mechanics fiddled with it for too long, and as a result the Frenchman received an hour's fine. True, his “stable” still retains the lead: the owner is not let down by the team’s second number, Spaniard Jose Maria Servia, who is almost 12 minutes ahead of Mitsubishi premier Jean-Pierre Fontanay. Well, Schlesser himself claims that all is not lost for him. In the desert, he seriously hopes to eliminate the backlog.
A similar situation arose among motorcyclists. There, several stars of the KTM team - the absolute favorite - suffered setbacks, but still in the first position is KTM rider Richard Sainct.
And finally, about the only marathon emergency to date. On the eve of the current Dakar, its organizers did everything to protect the rally participants from possible attacks from various African gangs and paramilitary groups. Such attacks have happened several times before. It was for safety reasons that it was decided to lay out the marathon route only in the western, quieter part of Africa. And when, back in Morocco, some media did write about threats against the raid participants from African terrorist organizations, the head of the rally organizing committee, Hubert Auriol, immediately held a briefing and stated that in fact there were no threats, Everything's under control. And yet, when crossing the Moroccan-Mauritanian border, one tragedy occurred. The escort jeep, driven by the Portuguese Jose Eduardo Ribeiro, ran over a mine and the explosion tore off the driver's foot. The victim was urgently evacuated to a hospital in the town of Laaione. However, according to Mr. Oriol, the Portuguese is to blame himself: firstly, he deviated from the route, and secondly, he did not react to the warning shots of the border guards.

ALEXEY J-DOSPEKHOV

Newspaper "Kommersant" No. 1 dated January 10, 2001, p. 7

Authors:

Alexey Dospehov