Baja Karelia, 13:02. Flash news...
Saturday, 23 May 2009 12:13
We haven't got any official results of the second passage through the big lap stage, however we can share with you some comments made by crews and short news from the route.
According to information received from the Organisers, 25 cars started SS3. The stage proved to be rather fast and quite smooth; however there were some 20 kilometres which won't be forgotten by the competitors. The rutted road, lots of bumps and jumps made cars' behavior so nervous that crews could easily lose their breath. Here and there you could see the parts of bodywork, broken lamps and other details left along the route after numerous tree hits.
Crew #203 (Viktor and Anatoliy Volikovs). Yesterday they seemed to have some problems with the turbocharger, but today's first stage showed the real trouble was somewhere deeper. Even before the start their car had been smoking like an ancient train, and even though the team's mechanics are working on the car, the time card was given away meaning retirement for the crew. Somewhere on the route the crew shared their tools with participants #231 who were desperately trying to repair their car with empty hands. Meanwhile the Volikovs, understanding there was no reason to hurry, were making their slow way to the finish, observing the landscape and environment. Eventually in one of the nearby marshes they "observed" the crew of Marat Khismatullin (#224). Together they managed to return the car on the road and from that moment on they have been fighting with each other exchanging positions for three times.
Alexey Denisov and Dmitriy Kozhukhov (#219, G-Force Motorsport) showed the real humanity when they saved the life of a local bunny who had been running ahead of their car and disturbing overtaking. Unfortunately, the Sentinel system for overtaking warnings wasn't supposed to be installed in local hairs...
Sergey Savenko and Vladimir Shukhnov (#227) got lost in the forest. And only after they had seen the car of Yuriy Borovikov did they find the right way and continued the fight, even though with a damaged steering rod. Some time later they also had to stop and help the crew #216 (Leonid Petrov/Alexander Monin) who rolled their car on the side.
Crew #206 (Andrey and Vladimir Novikovs cracked the front bumper of their Toyota and damaged the battery. However they did make it to the finish line, but had to take a new battery from their service car.
The prize for "best performance" could well be handed to the Belgian "OverDrive" company, the mechanics of which were trying to fuel the car of Alexander Mironenko in the Parc Ferme. Fortunately, that was noticed and prevented by marshals.
Crew #212 - retirement.
Times at first CP on SS3:
Andrey Zhigunov (№214) 0:17:08
Ruslan Misikov (№200) 0:18:10
Pavel Loginov (№210) 0:19:09
Yaroslav Solovyev (№213) 0:19:15
Alexey Denisov (№219) 0:20:06 (1 in Т2)
Vladimir Frolov (№204) 0:20:20
Yuriy Borovikov (№207) 0:20:24 (1 in the National category)
Konstantin Zhil'tsov (№205) 0:20:55
Alexander Mironenko (№209) 0:21:53
All news are unofficial and were written down from the words of participants.