De Baar sweeps up silver in leg four of the Silk Way Rally

13.7.2016

Czech truck from the MKR Technology workshop made its mark in the fourth stage of the extremely tough Silk Way Rally. The only competitor that the Dutch pilot Pascal de Baar did not manage to beat was Eduard Nikolaev on Kamaz.

“Pascal put up a great performance. In the preceding stage, which was basically the first real racing one, he was driving really carefully but now he successfully proved that our truck is capable of beating the Russian Kamazes. This brings great joy to us, though certain degree of caution is necessary. We’re not here to play a hazardous game, we need to stay rational,“ commented Mario Kress, chief constructor of the North Bohemia based MKR Technology.

Leg four led the crews to Kazakhstan’s capital city. This time they had to tackle a total of eight hundred and fifty-five kilometers from Kostanay to Astana, out of which almost three hundred and fifty formed the special stage. The silver pilot de Baar lost only four and half minutes on the victorious Russian and his Renault was the only truck in the top five to break the Kamaz dominance, while his colleague Martin van den Brink arrived to the finish on thirteenth place due to problems with engine temperatures. “We’re still dealing with the engine temperature issues. We spent the whole night working on them to prevent more serious troubles but still be able to race. We’re constantly in touch with the ventilator manufacturer. Actually, this is the reason why we came here. We need to adjust and fine-tune everything for the Dakar as best as possible and there’s no need to make fuss about the loss, which is not a big one anyway,“ described Mario Kress the situation.

In the overall ranking the Russian Kamaz machines are showing their power. After the introductory four racing days you will not find any other truck on the first six position. The former leader Karginov was replaced by the stage winner Nikolaev, who is followed by Sotnikov, Mardeev, Shibalov and the Chinese Hongning. Seventh place is occupied by Arthur Ardavichus on his Tatra and Pascal de Baar moved to the spot right behind him on Tuesday. The Czech pilot Tomáš Vrátný of Bonver Dakar Project is on eleventh spot, followed by Martin van den Brink with a new special Renault Sherpa, which is on the Silk Way Rally to complete the first racing kilometers and the MKR Technology team from Židovice is working hard on fine-tuning it for the January Dakar Rally.

Wednesday’s leg five from Astana to Balkash consists of eight hundred and twenty kilometers in total, but the teams will tackle this year’s longest special stage of five hundred and seventy kilometers. “It will be a massive pressure. It’s a solid portion of racing, so it will be a great test of our trucks. I believe we will be up to the challenge but of course we wish for the stage to be successfully over,“ added the chief constructor Mario Kress.