Jan 17th Final stage: Rosario > Buenos Aires

the fore of the Kamaz armada, Ayrat Mardeev ended up winning his first Dakar in Buenos Aires with two stage wins under his belt and an impressive consistency. Eduard Nikolaev and Andrey Karginov round off a 100% Russian podium.

As the Dakar competitorsy faced extremely slippery conditions thanks to the heavy rain, and as the course began to reach dangerous levels grip the organisers opted to stop the race at CP2. It meant that those who had hoped to improve their psition in the final ranking, were discouraged. Dutchman Hans Stacey managed to win the last stage, already his third this Dakar. Ayrat Mardeev has won his first Dakar Rally and the 13th for the dominant KAMAZ team in the truck category following a third-place showing in Sunday’s rain-shortened final stage.

KAMAZ locked out the overall podium with Mardeev topping Eduard Nikolaev by 13 minutes, 52 seconds. Coming in third was 2014 Dakar winner Andrey Karginov at 51 minutes off the pace. Nikolaev may well be wondering if it would have been him on the top step in Buenos Aires if not for a turbo-charger failure on his truck in Stage 7 that cost him more than an hour. A win in Stage 8 and runner-up in Stage 9 brought him back up to second place overall behind Mardeev, and it appeared he had the momentum behind him again.

But even with another victory in Stage 10, it did next to nothing in bringing him closer because Mardeev finished second that day at a mere 49 seconds back. That proved critical for Mardeev, who would manage his lead with finishes of ninth, fifth, and third in the remaining stages to take the crown for himself. Nikolaev may have led all truck drivers with six stage wins, but Mardeev’s consistency won out.

As for Stage 13, Hans Stacey pulled off an impressive third consecutive stage win to end his Dakar the same way he started it. Stacey and his Iveco out-hustled the MAN of Marcel Van Vliet by 1 minute, 21 seconds.

Ales Loprais came home 4th. He was satisfied with his Dutch MAN truck and even considers to stay with MAN, so not returning to Tatra.

Best Tatra this Dakar was Martin Kolomy in 7th spot, followed by Tomas Vratny in 14 th spot, 10 hrs behind Mardeev. The Pole Robert Szustkowski managed 19th, 12 hr 452 sec adrift. Artur Ardavichus had a troublesome Dakar and finished 17 hr 44 min behind Mardeev. He beat Dutchman Gert Huzink (Tatra Phoenix) by 5 hrs and the Slovak Kasak by almost 9 hrs. The last Tatra finished more than 26 hrs behind Mardeeev.