OREANDA-NEWS. Sotnikov scored the best time at Stage 5 of SWR-2017 that connected Astana and Semey, and SS was 484 km long. One of the longest specials was described by the race officials as navigational and fast, but the problems occurred not only with navigation. Stephane Peterhansel’s car had a problem on the track and the crew lost almost an hour. Due to this loss of time the sportsman's now only 13th in the general classification. Sebastien Loeb also lost 17 minutes, but managed to keep the lead in the overall. First in this category was Cyril Despres, overtaking Chinese driver Zhou Yong in only 6 minutes 26 seconds.

The truck category hasn't been without retirements today. Gerard de Rooy left the track due to the broken right rail of the cab and got to the bivouac by public roads. The new Iveco couldn’t stand the test by Kazakh steppes. The Dutch will continue the race, but the battle for the podium isn't over for him. Also Martin Kolomy faced problems. «Flying» out of the track to the loose soil costed him 37 minutes and moved him down to the third position in the overall.

Airat Mardeev lost 26 minutes to change a punctured wheel, and it makes him fourth in the general classification. Eduard Nikolaev’s crew showed a good result, finishing with a 10-minute gap fr om Dmitry Sotnikov.

The best in the truck category today was Dmitry Sotnikov, with a time advantage of 4 minutes. Apart from it the KAMAZ drivers took second and third places in the overall, giving lead to Cyril Despres. By the way, Anton Shibalov’s crew participates in the race as a fast assistance truck and as he told later he tried not to keep close to him in order to help each other if necessary. They did it and showed excellent teamwork.

Dmitry Sotnikov, pilot of KAMAZ-master Team, crew No. 303: «Today’s stage was very fast and it was easier to navigate for those who went behind a number of participants. It is usual for rally raids. Today was the fastest special concerning the medium speed, just «pedal to the metal» and trying to cut everywhere possible and we did it. I had a target to catch up with Anton Shibalov and be as close to him as possible, as most of spare parts were with him. May be that was our motivation. And as soon as we had reached him, we continued together. We caught up with Kolomy, he let us ahead and then we were just «flying». Then reaching Viazovich, we had an interesting battle: we didn’t signal him, just overplayed him by trajectories. I think both of us did a great job today. I would give him another first place (laughes).»

Anton Shibalov, pilot of KAMAZ-master Team, crew No. 312: «Having passed a half of the special, Dmitry Sotnikov caught up with us, and we drove in a line most of the time: Kolomy, our crew and Dima’s crew. Due to the heavy dust, it was hard to come closer. We drove approximately 200 km after Kolomy. Then on the maximum speed together with Dima we came closer to him and he let us ahead. Then there was impassibility, wh ere he lost 40 minutes. But the most interesting started 40 km before the finish, when we reached Viazovich: only a battle of navigators, cuttings, and in the end we could overpass him.»

Eduard Nikolaev, KAMAZ-master Team, crew No. 307: «The day was good. We drove fast and even were surprised that Dima and Anton «brought» us something special. We overpassed Viazovich, for a long time he was driving behind us. Then Kolomy was standing – he got stuck, went in the wrong direction. We saw de Rooy standing. The whole day we were fighting with cars, overkeeping them, catching up with them, overkeeping them on the turns but they reached us on straight roads again.»

Airat Mardeev, pilot of KAMAZ-master Team, crew No 300: «At first we went at a good pace, we overran Kolomy and Viazovich, saw Nikolaev ahead and understood that were going with a good speed. We overkept de Rooy. We moved further and punctured a tyre. Usually you drive, see that you got on a stone – everything is clear then, but today I didn’t see anything. I don’t know wh ere and how I punctured the wheel, just the mechanic said that we had a tyre puncture. It was a side inside cut – it is difficult to do with a stone.»