OREANDA-NEWS. On 18 January there was a celebration in honour of the winners of the Dakar-2009 rally in Buenos Aires.
The race of the Dakar-2009 rally-raid came to an end on 17 January. The last 14th stage in Santa-Fe province (by the way, this is Ernesto “Che” Guevara’s motherland) dotted i’s and crossed t’s.

The news about the victory of the KAMAZ-master team has already spread throughout Russia. The well-known surnames and names are again on top of the Dakar rating. An avalanche of congratulations and responses concerning the Russian racing drivers’ new achievement is going through all communication channels.

And by tradition, we will name the winners in other main categories of Dakar classification.

In the motorcycle class, Marc Coma won the second victory at Dakar; it was the Spanish racers’ third triumph at Dakar races. Here the hegemony of KTM continues; it “delegated” 8 motor racing motorcyclists to the top ten. And Frenchmen Cyril Despres (KTM), Dakar-2007 winner, and David Frйtignй (Yamaha) were among the top three. Among women only Swede Annie Seel (KTM) managed to get to the capital of Argentina taking the 76th place. This year Russia didn’t compete in this category.

The quadricycle class has only started developing fully and “independently” at Dakars. Many producers of four-wheeled vehicles are struggling for a big slice of the Dakar cake. In sum they exhibited 25 units of equipment 13 of which returned to Buenos Aires. Czech Joseph Mahachek on Yamaha Raptor, Argentinean Marcos Patronelli on CAN-AM 800 (by the way, he was the only Latin American on the podium) and Pole Rafal Sonik (Yamaha Raptor) succeeded in the race. Frenchwoman Elizabeth Kraft (Polaris Outlaw 525) with the final 8th place was the best among women because all her rivals left the race on its early stages. This mode of transport remains exotic for Russia.

And “a revolution” came about in the car and jeep class: that’s over and done with Mitsubishi’s long-term supremacy. A very serious competitor appeared. Race Touareg with a powerful diesel engine, Volkswagen’s new racing product, could have taken all places on the Dakar podium but for a disappointing breakdown of Spaniard Carlos Sainz’ car, the leader at that moment, and his navigator’s trauma on one of the last stages. And South African Giniel de Villiers’ crew won a victory, American Mark Miller’s crew ranked second. This year the German large automobile plant hired really the best racing drivers of the world; even German Juta Kleinschmidt who had been representing VW at Dakars for many years and had won a victory for this make in 2001 was out of the running. And in general, there was no woman in this class at Dakar-2009! The whole podium was occupied by English-speaking people because for the first time at Dakars American Hummer’s crew with pilot Robby Gordon took the third place. Qatar’s Nasser Al-Attiyah with Sweden’s Tina Thoerner on BMW stood to win too, but when it came to the push an engine of this vehicle let them down…

It is necessary to mention a successful performance of the Russian crew ¬– Leonid Novitsky and Oleg Tyupenkin who for the first time was among the top ten (on the 8th place). The Russians became the best crew on BMW. Yesterday only two seconds were necessary for the first Russian victory at Dakar stages! In total 5 crews from Russia got to the finish line of the marathon.

The Russian KAMAZ-master team gained victory in the truck class not easily though its supremacy on the last stages was considerable. It became evident already on the first stages that several automobile companies at once had racing equipment of equal worth in many respects. As a rule, the first 7-10 trucks ran with an interval of only several seconds on the plain and high-speed sections or on the track which didn’t require especially refined piloting and navigation skills. The extreme tracks were decisive: the more difficult the conditions of passing were the higher supremacy of three KAMAZ crews was. KAMAZ-master and its racing equipment proved to be really off-road, which fully corresponds with the name and main point of this rally. And, of course, it was so thanks to the human factor and very efficient command tactics.

As to women on heavy vehicles at the rally, Italy’s Luisa Elena Trucco who piloted IVECO Eurocargo was the best among them. The overall 17th place is not a bad result for the prototype of commercial medium tonnage trucks of this make.

After the fiesta in Argentina the KAMAZ-master team started to prepare for homecoming.