OREANDA-NEWS. January 19, 2009. The last 14th stage of the Dakar-2009 off-road rally-raid which was passed by the crews of the KAMAZ-master team brilliantly was the end of the first marathon race in South America. It let the Russians win a wonderful victory – the eighth one for no less than 20-year history of their participation in the most popular and prestigious contests in this kind of extreme motor sport.

Yesterday KAMAZ № 506 and 501 headed by pilots Firdaus Kabirov and Vladimir Chaguin, with navigators Aidar Belyaev and Sergey Savostin, mechanics Andrey Mokeev and Eduard Nikolaev were on the podium in Buenos Aires.

The third crew of the team (pilot Ilghizar Mardeev, navigator Vyacheslav Mizyukaev and mechanic Airat Mardeev) which took the fourth place in the final standing and became the best in an unofficial event of “quick emergency service vehicles” shared the victorious triumph. It should be mentioned that the head of the team Semyon Yakubov, specialists, mechanics, drivers and managers also contributed to the success of the KAMAZ-master team.

Stage 14 “Cordoba – Buenos Aires”, 17 January
The total length of the track is 792 km, the high-speed section is 227 km long

For the first time during the last years the KAMAZ-master team felt so comfortable on the finish of the marathon race according to the final classification of its crews that it could even arrange “an internal championship” in rally-raids with a shortened time limit.

And meanwhile millions of Russian and foreign fans of the team were impatiently waiting for the finale of the approaching victory of the KAMAZ-master team. And it didn’t matter who would come out on top – Firdaus Kabirov’s or Vladimir Chaguin’s crew. Both of them are the strongest; and nobody could blame one of them that it was several minutes and seconds behind the other – on the distance of 5 thousand km!

But Dakar is a stern race; it was initially “designed” in such a way that anything, even the most unimaginable, could happen there. No one can always feel secured against anything. And the “legend” of the last stage warned the racers: surprises which could make all their efforts unavailing in a flash were in store for them on the last length of the high-speed section. That’s why the team was in a serious vein before the last stage. A tiny spark of excitement was felt in the last interview given by Semyon Yakubov before the final stage.

At first sight, the task was simple: to pass 227 km unhurriedly, without any risk, not to run into trouble. The advantage gained during the last 13 stages made such a strategy possible. But that’s not like the KAMAZ racers with their “incurable” winner psychology. Our racers rushed to the attack as if they had to overtake their competitors, but not vice versa. And thereby they secured a worthy final of Dakar-2009 with full correspondence with the spirit of this race.

Even the Dakar know-how of statistics, calculation and data ware smoothly running for years couldn’t bear the KAMAZ racers’ pressure. The “Tracking” control system of the race (www.dakar.com) failed to register the results of Firdaus Kabirov’s crew during the whole stage, although KAMAZ № 406 was on top in all spaces of time. As if a champion-to-be didn’t pass the stage at all! There was always confusion in the ranking of the current results. It came to the situation when Andre de Azevedo’s crew which was a good half an hour behind the KAMAZ racers on the last kilometers of the high-speed section were registered the winners of the stage. More than 25 crews in the truck class finished, but the Dakar news didn’t mention the surnames of the members of Firdaus Kabirov’s crew. The information agencies and the leading sport sites of the world had already announced Vladimir Chaguin’s crew the winner of the race. But Firdaus Kabirov and his fellows were not mentioned in the ranking!

Fortunately, the system started working and showed the correct results of the stage and the whole rally. In 2009 Firdaus Kabirov’s crew won in the truck class, Vladimir Chaguin’s crew was second and Ilghizar Mardeev’s crew took the fourth place.