Beyneu, Kazakhstan, September 8th 2009
On the route to Beyneu Carlos Sainz was the best on the longest stage of the Silk Way rally and reduce his lag with Nasser Al Attiyah. But the Qatari still the leader. In truck race Firdaus Kabirov pull out the victory from De Rooy and now comes very close to Chadin.
At the same time as stages become longer and longer, the pilots have to use extra special tactics. We are definitely on a real off-road rally. A real fight strike up between Carlos Sainz and Nasser Al Attiyah. Spanish pilot pull out the win from Qatari but it doesn’t affected the overall ranking, Nasser is still ahead. But fact is fact – on the longest special of the rally Sainz was the quickest. Certainly Al Matador benefited of one puncture of his rival. Starting tomorrow it requires maximum risk if he wants to win the race.
Christian Lavieille feels quite confident at the moment in the 5th place fight. Today he showed the best result on the stage with two sand paths and he lost two of his main competitors: Aleksey Bercut, who lost 40 min and Andre Birukov, who dropped out of the race because of an accident. Among his closest pursuers Philippe Gache and Matias Kahle had a good race and will give him good competition.
The trucks, prepared by KAMAZ-master do not stand down to cars. The winner of the day in the trucks race, Firdaus Kabirov was just quicker than Christian Lavieille ! Now he is second overall, losing only 2’33” to Vladimir Chagin. Gerard De Rooy finished today with the third place and has the third position in general, and as his lagging increased, his mission becoming almost impossible. The mission of Ales Loprais even less accessible, now his gap with the podium is more than half an hour.
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