Silk Way in full swing, van den Brink finishes on sixth

11.7.2016

The Silk Way Rally has pulled away. After severe weather forced the organizers to cancel leg two following the opening prologue, the crews waited to tackle the first set of drudging kilometers until day three. The Monday stage suited best to Kamazes which are on the home ground here, yet Martin van den Brink and his crew, including the Roudnice mechanic Daniel Kozlovský, on the new special Renault Sherpa finished on sixth place only by a small margin. “It was not an ideal performance, we had some trouble with the temperature of the engine. We‘re still at the beginning and the race is very long and demanding, that‘s why we started out gradually. We don‘t want to push our luck. We‘re very much aware that these are the first race kilometers for the Sherpa and that‘s why preparing it for the Dakar is a priority for us. This cost us some time but it‘s not so bad. We didn‘t let anyone overtake us but in the end we arrived on sixth place,“ commented Renault Sherpa‘s chief designer Mario Kress.

            Following his win in the prologue Martin van den Brink started into leg three from position one. He got down to it rather carefully, limited by the problem with the engine temperature, which made him drop to seventh place. Eventually, he improved his standing by one rank, losing four minutes on the winner. The stage revealed superiority of the home machines. Only the Belarus Viazovitch managed to squeeze in to the top five, joining a quartet of Kamaz trucks. The leg was dominated by the Russian Karginov with a 2.5minute margin on second place. In comparison, van den Brink‘s colleague Pascal de Baar tackled the track in fourteenth best time. Ranks eight and twelve were occupied by the associated Czech Bonver Dakar Project team represented by the pilots Ardavichus and Vrátný.

            Leg three, which stretched over eight hundred and fifteen kilometers from Ufa to Kostanay, led the crews out of Russia and to Kazakhstan. Ardavichus‘ home country is going to host the race for the next five days. Already on Tuesday the teams will experience the capital city of Astana. The fourth leg consists of eight hundred and fifty kilometers in total, out of which three hundred and forty-five will be the special stage. “We‘re not going to take any risks now, we‘re going to fine-tune the engine, which will bring us more certainty on the road. Result is still in our focus here,“ admitted Mario Kress with a mischievous wink.