Arthur Ardavichus. Photo courtesy of Astana team's press-service
Pilot of Kazakhstan team Astana Arthur Ardavichus is sure that the rally can already be considered successful for Kazakhstan thanks to the leadership after the third stage of Dakar, Tengrinews.kz reports. “We have already made a statement, we showed that we can be first. It is very difficult now; Dakar is a very difficult 15-day marathon,” Ardavichus noted. After the fifth stage Astana is ranked fifth in the general classification. According to the team’s mechanic Nurlan Turlybayev, this is not a ceiling for Kazakhstan team: “We have not shown all the capacities of our truck yet. We are caring about it. We got into the dunes at the fifth stage, the temperature went up to 110 degrees, so we had to blow deflate our tires to prevent them from being damaged. There were very sharp ravines, rivers, the front hit was strong.” Organizers of Dakar decided to cancel the sixth stage of the race because of the bad weather conditions. Thus, the next stage of the rally will start on January 7 in Chile. Ardavichus’s crew is 27 minutes 38 seconds behind the leader, Dutch racer De Rooy.
Pilot of Kazakhstan team Astana Arthur Ardavichus is sure that the rally can already be considered successful for Kazakhstan thanks to the leadership after the third stage of Dakar, Tengrinews.kz reports.
“We have already made a statement, we showed that we can be first. It is very difficult now; Dakar is a very difficult 15-day marathon,” Ardavichus noted.
After the fifth stage Astana is ranked fifth in the general classification. According to the team’s mechanic Nurlan Turlybayev, this is not a ceiling for Kazakhstan team: “We have not shown all the capacities of our truck yet. We are caring about it. We got into the dunes at the fifth stage, the temperature went up to 110 degrees, so we had to blow deflate our tires to prevent them from being damaged. There were very sharp ravines, rivers, the front hit was strong.”
Organizers of Dakar decided to cancel the sixth stage of the race because of the bad weather conditions. Thus, the next stage of the rally will start on January 7 in Chile. Ardavichus’s crew is 27 minutes 38 seconds behind the leader, Dutch racer De Rooy.