Photo credit: Sergey Karjakin / © vk.com/russiansnag
Dakar Rally started on Saturday, January 2, TASS reports. This is the 2nd time that Saudi Arabia has hosted it. This start of the Dakar became the 43rd. The marathon participants will start in the city of Jeddah, where they will finish on January 15. In two weeks, they will have to cover more than 7,600 kilometers. Of these, the length of the special stages exceeds 4,700 kilometers.
It was planned that more than 320 vehicles will be involved in the race. Unfortunately, not all participants were admitted to the marathon. They could not cope with one of the main conditions - to pass the coronavirus test. Because of this, navigator Konstantin Zhiltsov had to abandon the race. It was planned that he would ride with Denis Krotov.
As a result, Oleg Uperenko, a resident of Latvia, became Krotov's navigator. Vladimir Vasiliev and rally debutant Viktor Khoroshavtsev will fight for the victory in the car classification, and Alexey Kuzmich will be the co-driver of Yasser Seidan from Saudi Arabia.
Sergey Karjakin will perform on a buggy. The Russian already has one Dakar victory to his name. He won the quad stage three years ago.
The Russian Kamaz-master team has been leading in the truck competition for several years now. This year, Russia is represented by four crews. Last year's Dakar winner Andrey Karginov will start the race. Anton Shibalov, Airat Mardeev and Dmitry Sotnikov will compete with him. All of them successfully passed the coronavirus tests and were allowed to race.
Five-time Dakar winner Eduard Nikolaev will not fight for victory. However, he came to Saudi Arabia as an assistant to the team leader Vladimir Chagin.
Russkiy Mir
