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After nine very tough stages along a route that
took the competitors through Russia, Kazahstan
and Turkmenistan, the Iveco Trakker of Team de
Rooy finished the inaugural Silk Way Rally in
Ashgabad on Sunday in a highly impressive second
place.
Eight days after
the crews started from the city of Kazan in Russia, and
after completing 4,800 km,
34 cars and 16 trucks survived the rigours to
roll into Ashgabad, the capital city of Turkmenistan on
Sunday. Carlos Sainz won the car category after a titanic
battle with VW team mate Nasser Al Attiyh which was only
resolved at the very last minute when the Spanish veteran
pushed the Qatari into a frantic pace that was simply too
much and he crashed, while the factory Kamaz-Master driven
by Firdaus Kabirov won the truck race overall after a tough week of fighting.
For a first edition of a rally that
is clearly set to become one of the most popular
in the rally raid world, the morning ceremony of the last stage was simply amazing.
President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimukhamedov, President of Russia
Dmitriy Medvedev and President of Kazakhstan Nursultan Nazarbaev all met in
Turkmenbashi, on the beach of Kaspian sea, to celebrate the birth of this new
event and to greet the crews.
While the Iveco Trakker driven by Gerard de Rooy
raced to a strong podium finish to the immense
satisfaction of the Dutch team,
the
President of Russia was delighted
with the performance of Kamaz-Master factory
trucks which saw four of its number finish in
the top six out of an eight strong factory entry
and with Kabirov emerging as the overall winner
after another multiple Dakar Rally winning team
mate, Vladimir Chagin, lost any chance for the
victory following an accident on the
route. Gerard De Rooy and Ales Loprais (Tatra)
got onto the podium and prove they
can compete with mighty Kamaz effort.
Legendary Dutch-based rally-raid truck racers, Team de Rooy,
had built up a brand new Iveco Trakker
especially
for this event with the powerful Iveco FPT Cursor 13 engines supplied by Iveco Schouten, and
after intensive
pre-event
testing in Morocco and France, Gerard de Rooy took to the start ramp of
the inaugural Silk Way Rally which got underway a week last Saturday in Kazan the capital of Tatarstan (Russia). Gerard de Rooy,
who actually led the truck category at the start
of the event, eventually came home in second
place, 1 hour 2 minutes and 25 seconds behind
the winning Kamaz. The Dutchman was well supported
on the event by his father, Dakar legend Jan de Rooy,
who took part behind the wheel of the Trakker with which he
won the legendary African Dakar race last year
and he eventually came home ninth, 6 hours, 51
minutes and 37 seconds behind the winner.
The YMZ V8
engine used in the Kamaz-Master is a special military engine
with a capacity of 18.47 litres, meaning that its
displacement is more than five-and-a-half litres larger than
the Iveco FPT Cursor 13's 12.88 litre capacity. The other
main truck contender, the Tatra of Team Loprais, uses a
15.87 litre Deutz V8 in place of the original air cooled Tatra
V12. Officially the Kamaz-Master engine puts out 830 hp @
2500 rpm and 2700 Nm @ 1600 rpm, the Loprais-Tatra Deutz V8
has 860 hp @ 2100 rpm and 3500 Nm @ 1200 rpm on hand while
the Team de Rooy Iveco FPT Cursor 13 is the least powerful
with 820hp @ 2200 rpm and 3200 Nm @ 1200 rpm, although the
officially released power data is somewhat tactical and in
reality the Cursor 13 outperforms the two big V8.
FIA regulation for cross country truck racing say that the main components must
be derived from serial production, allowed minimum weight is 8.5 tons, allowed
maximum speed is 150 km/h (supervised by GPS data logger),
allowed suspension travel is 300 mm (much more than serial),
electronic driving assists like ABS, ASR or ESP are
forbidden, the ON-OFF type differential locks have to be
operated manually, CTIS (Central tyre inflation system) is
permitted and the crew normally consists of three people:
driver, navigator and mechanic, which, as Dakar crews will
say, if you have to dig the vehicle out, it's better if
there are three of you.
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