For this penultimate stage between San Juan and Cordoba, the organizers decided to send the trucks out first along a shorter route than the other competitors, covering the second half of the car, bike and quad special, for a total distance of 318 km. Just like the two previous days, Vladimir Chagin reigned supreme over the rest of the field. The Russian Kamaz driver picked up his 7th stage victory in 2011 and the 63rd of his career on the Dakar. Today, Chagin beat his team-mate Firdaus Kabirov by 1′05 and Spaniard Pep Vila (Iveco-De Rooy) by a little less than 5 minutes.

As a result, Chagin closes in on his 7th title. In the general standings, the “Tsar” possesses a very significant lead that stands at more than half an hour over Kabirov. The two men are followed by two other Kamaz drivers, Nikolaev, nearly 3 hours behind, and Mardeev, more than 5 and a half hours behind.

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 Vladimir Chagin took his 62 career stage win in his Kamaz, beating Spain’s Pep Vila by 10m53. Chagin’s nearest challenger in the general standings, teammate and compatriot Firdaus Kabirov was third on the stage, 13m23 behind Chagin. Chagin now has an overall lead of 30m31 over Kabirov, with the third Kamaz of Eduard Nikolaev over two hours further back.

Two days before the end of the Dakar-2011 rally in Argentina, Russian KAMAZ team is dominating. The crews led by Vladimir Chagin, Firdaus Kibarov, Eduard Nikolayev and Ilgizar Mardeyev have left allmost all their rivals behind.

The Russian KAMAZ-Master team is a nine-time winner of the Dakar rally and won the rally in 2009 and 2010.

Stage results:

Trucks:
1 Vladimir Chagin (Kamaz) in 5:12m02
2 Pep Vila (Iveco) +0:11m04
3 Firdaus Kabirov (Kamaz) +0:13m04
4 Eduard Nikolaev (Kamaz) +0:14m37
5 Hugo Duisters (Iveco) +0:17m30

Overall standings:

1 Vladimir Chagin (Kamaz) in 44:08m40
2 Firdaus Kabirov (Kamaz) +0:30m31
3 Eduard Nikolaev (Kamaz) +2:58m43
4 Ilgizar Mardeev (Kamaz) +5:34m06
5 Franz Echter (MAN) +5:38m07

 Chagin beated Kamaz team mate Kabirov this time, regaining the overall lead. 

Results:

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The race is over for Ales Loprais after Stage 9.

After technical problems in Stage 9, the crew is forced to withdraw from the Dakar rally after reaching stunning podium placements all over the race so far.

Tatra No. 504 experienced its first technical troubles of the race in Stage 9, having started behind the duo of leading Kamaz trucks. Ales Loprais maintained a solid 3rd place as usual, ready to strike when needed. However, at km 77 the truck stopped with a broken turbocharger. The breakdown was not repairable on spot as the race truck is not carrying a spare charger in the special. Consequently, the truck lost 70 per cent of its power and with that limitation it was extremely hard to cross dune filed and sand mountains, on top of which the organisers placed numerous waypoints. The situation was growing tougher as reaching the dunes was increasingly compliucated. Some dunes had to be jumped and on one of them the crew broke a shock absorber. Finally it reached the finish of the special, some 2h48min behind the winner, Kabirov. The missed waypoints, however, resulted to exclusion from the race. The Tatra crew had drawn many sympathies even by competitors who jointly asked the jury for keeping Ales Loprais in the race but the jury made no compromise. The Kamaz trio is now leading the race as it aimed originally and the only serious contender and challenger of Kamaz is our of the race.

„I would like to express many thanks to all of our partners and supporters who pushed us to reach the aim we set at the beginning of the race. In fact, we succeeded and followed that aim until the critical moment. Unfortunately, the truck lost much of its power to cross the dunes we faught with but the risk and danger of getting stuck forever or of flipping the truck on tops of dunes was too high. Of course we must respect the decision of the jury. But the initiative of some of our competitors was truly remarkable,“ Ales Loprais said.

 „Many thanks go also to my team,“ Ales continues,“ Milan Holan, my race mechanic and actually designer and constructor of our race truck, and Josef Kalina for sharing so much of his experience and great navigation. Three mechanics from the assistance truck, Radim Pustejovsky, Jaromir Halfar and Leo Loprais are to receive credit for their excellent maintenance work in the bivouacs.“

So, after a marvelous ride and hard battle for top spots in the ranking, the race is over for Ales Loprais. Unfortunately, the problem came unexpectedly in the furthermost spot of the stage at dune fileds. on a hard surface, the stage could have been finished, slowly but surely.

„Although this year we got stopped by technical reasons, I am proud of what we achieved in the course of the race.The results so far gave us proof we were on the good track to our goal. It is sad now but ceratinly it is a new energy for the future.“ Ales concludes.

Many thanks to all who supported us throughout the race.

Loprais Tatra Team
 

http://loprais.com/loprais-eng/index.php?obsah=zobraz&id_clanku=465

Firdaus Kabirov has reclaimed the lead in the truck event at the Dakar Rally after winning the ninth stage in Copiapo, northern Chile.

He beat his team-mate and countryman Vladimir Chagin by 7:38 and is now 4:11 ahead of Chagin in the overall standings.

Eduard Nikolaev – also Russian and also with Kamaz – came next 14:50 back – and moved up to third place overall despite being over two hours back of Kabirov.

Ales Loprais started the day in third but a disastrous day – turbocharger failure – saw him plummet out of the top positions though overall he is still fourth.  With less power, the Tatra stranded numeral times in the dunes, but due to hard work the sole Tatra remaining managed to finish, loosing 2:48:49 on Kabirov. He is now fourth overall. Once he has solved his problems, Loprais should go for stage wins and the third overall position, now held by Eduard Nikolaev.

Stage results:

Overall standings:

Luck ended for Ales Loprais, Milan Holan and Josef Kalina when they stopped at today’s stage at 110 km. The Kamaz squad is now certainb to take the complete podium, as Loprais has lost hours and will be happy if he manages to continue.

In stage 8, Chagin proved he was still thre after two less successfull stages and stormed to a convincing stage win and retook the overall leadership. Loprais had a bad day, dropping due to a pucture from 3rd place at WP4 to 9th at WP5, loosing more than 15 min. Loprais then pushed hard and eventually finished 4th but dropped to 3rd overall, close to 30 min behind Chagin. According to www.loprais.cz the stage exhausted the Loprais crew but they will continue as “the show must go on”

Results

Nos  Num  Drivers  Nat  Make/Model  Time  Gap to 1st  Penalties 
1.  500  Vladimir Chagin, Sergey Savostin, Ildar Shays  RUS  Kamaz  6:01:12  0:00:00  - 
2.  502  Firdaus Kabirov, Aydar Belyaev, Andrey Mokeev  RUS  Kamaz  6:33:01  0:31:49  - 
3.  512  Eduard Nikolaev, Viatcheslav Mizyukaev, Vladi  RUS  Kamaz  6:38:07  0:36:55  - 
4.  504  Ales Loprais, Milan Holan, Josef Kalina  CZ  Tatra  6:42:48  0:41:36  - 

Overall standings:

Pos  Num  Drivers  Nat  Make/Model  Time  Gap to 1st  Penalties 
1.  500  Vladimir Chagin, Sergey Savostin, Ildar Shays  RUS  Kamaz  8:42:00  0:00:00  - 
2.  502  Firdaus Kabirov, Aydar Belyaev, Andrey Mokeev  RUS  Kamaz  8:45:27  0:03:27  - 
3.  504  Ales Loprais, Milan Holan, Josef Kalina  CZ  Tatra  9:11:36  0:29:36  - 
4.  512  Eduard Nikolaev, Viatcheslav Mizyukaev, Vladi  RUS  Kamaz  10:34:28  1:52:28  -

Ales Loprais claims another stage win and manages to reach second overall

Also Stage 7 of the Dakar rally was marked by quality performance of Tatra No. 504, which manages to clib in the overall ranking.

Stage 7 took all competitors back to the dunes of the Atacama desert, the driest place on Earth. After some consideration, the organisers decided to shorten Leg 7 to macimum 252 km but surely it was a massive set of dunes and dust. Even No. 8 in the rankings the Kazakh Astana Kamaz truck, lost more than one hour to the stage winner. Ales Loprais started the special as the first truck, for the first time this year and he succeeded. From the opening sections, he managed to maintain and even extend the lead ahead of the Kamaz duo. While the overall leader, kabirov, drove consistently, chagin lost some minor time, probably at a puncture. Although the 6-time winner managed to close the gap a little, in the end Ales Loprais extended his lead also to him. Loprais then wins the second stage in a row and manages to reach No. 2 overall, keeping Chagin 12 minutes adrift.

„Today there was another beautiful stage and we were lucky all over it. It was atechnical one, with numerous jumps and high dunes. We drove at our maximum and fortunately managed to win again. But it is really hard, the pressure is sometimes at extremes. We fight for every second and still we have thousands of kilometers ahead of us. What pleases us is the way that other big competing teams chear for us in this truck battle. Team de Rooy even offered its own phisiotherapist and massagers, which is very kind of them. So, we keep battling but it must be careful. What else could be done…,“ Ales Loprais comments.

In the overall ranking, there is a change on positions 2 and 3. The lead of Kabirov is a bit smaller now but the situation is also documented by the 3rd place of chagin – all he lost for the whole rally is a time of three punctures and flaty tire is a relatively routine situation in this sport. Nothing is decided also at the fight for te fourt place as Echter pushed hard and gained some time over Nikolaev. Also interesting is the small battle of two different MAN trucks for places 8 and 9. Whereas van Vliet is driving an ex-Stacey champ special, his follower, Behringer, sits behind the wheel of an ordinary production machine.

So, the battle of Atacama moves on, keep your fingers crossed! Stage 8 will offer another gruelling menu from Antofagasta to Copiapó, including a 508-kilometre special, the longest in the rally so far.