The Kamaz team are somewhat of an enigma. Their HQ is in a place called Naberezhnie Chelni… and I’m sure that I’m not alone in not knowing exactly where that is. At this time of the year snow has covered the ground for almost three months already and no one would be overly concerned if the thermometers showed -25. Yet the men from this frozen land are the undisputed kings of the desert. Behind living legend Peterhansel there is only one other man who comes close to his record and that is the ‘Tsar’ Vladimir Chagin with six wins to his name in the truck class prior to the 2011 edition of Dakar.
However 2011 didn’t seem to be the dominant performance we’ve been used to from recent years. He lost time with punctures and as the teams headed for the rest day he was languishing in 3rd place, some 30 minute behind the leader, his Kamaz team mate and fellow Russian Firdaus Kabirov. If anyone was ready to write him off, all the critics were silenced with a serious of stunning stage times that only the Master himself could produce. On Stage 8 for example, he posted the 5th fastest overall time behind the VWs! Stages 10 and 11 were the same, changing the deficit into a half an hour lead… one that he was not to loose. Now with 64 stage wins and seven outright victories Chagin is officially the most successful Dakar class driver ever. (Peterhansel has won 9 titles, but only 6 in the bike class).
But not at every stage did it look like it was going to be a Kamaz white-and-blue wash, at the half way point the bright yellow Tatra team of Ales Loprais were in 2nd after two straight stage wins, just 16 minutes behind Kabirov and the same ahead of Chagin. It’s hard to call an 8-ton behemoth a minnow, but the Kamaz Master Team is just about a works effort, with support from the very highest circles of the Russian state administration… while Loprais has just eight people working on his truck. His challenge didn’t last to the end though and a faulty turbo charger put pay to their hopes of an amazing podium. With no turbo boost it was almost impossible to crest the dunes and with the lacking torque momentum is what they used… until the suspension started to give way after too many heavy landings. They managed to get back to camp but missed so many waypoints on the way that the organizers had no choice but to exclude them. From that point Kamaz victory was assured.
Going almost unnoticed behind his famous team mates was the young Eduard Nikolaev in the third Kamaz but the lack of press coverage belies that fact that this 26 year old finished in an unchallenged 3rd place on his first ever Dakar behind the wheel. In his first major event, last year’s Silk Way Rally he beat both Chagin and Kabirov on merit and as Chagin himself said, the next generation of Kamaz drivers is starting to come to the fore, Nikolaev at the head of the queue.