Silk Way. Resume
Thursday, 28 October 2010 04:16
The crew of Boris Gadasin and Vladimir Demyanenko has attracted all glances by their bright performance in the first days, being called "the best of the rest" and "the best of non-Volkswagen drivers". They were the only ones who could intervene in the Volswagen's internal rivalry which was widely covered by the ASO TV operators. Unfortunately after a dramatic crash at the 4th stage Boris had to stop the race. We interviewed Boris so you can read about the details of the roll at first hand. We also publish the photo of the disastrous pit.
Boris Gadasin: our crash was quite a usual sports incident that is likely to happen when the crew is driving full blast aiming for the highest possible result. Speaking about the details of it, in the beginning of the Special Stage we who caught up with Miller was obviously having some navigating problems. He didn’t respond to Sentinel signal so had to drive behind in his dust. Then in this dust we also made a navigating mistake allowing him to leave us behind. So by the time we got to the road along the fields we had almost no problems with Miller’s dust. That’s when fast and straight roads started. The note in the roadbook before the pit was as far as 2.4 km. The pit’s roughness level was marked as 1 – which is a type that we usually wouldn’t even notice in our car. And a few pits before that one we did ok, but then at that very place there was a very hard impact on the back wheels and flying rolled over so that the next impact was all for the bonnet. We were driving 170 km/hour so we were rolled quite a few times for about 150 meters but landed on wheels. We were lucky not to be injured and moreover the car proved to be very strong – the damage came up to only external body kit and auxiliary parts and the rear axle that was ripped out. Engine, transmission, front suspension and cockpit remained undamaged. So our next start is at Baja in Portalegre. Me and my co-driver examined the place of the crash and we both agreed that we were just unlucky – the speed of the car and the pit shape coincided and consequently the front of the car flew over it while the rear wheels hit the opposite side of the pit and suspension just wasn’t able to work on such impact at such speed. .
Vladimir Demyanenko: thinking for quite a while about the crash I realized that fighting on such a high level means you have such high risks. When you are driving fast leading in the competition you will meet troubles on your way. So I am sure there was quite a few unfortunate circumstances that all came together – the pit in the wrong moment of time, the speed which probably should’ve been less. Tere’s no one to blame for this - neither organisers nor myself. The racer always has to be ready for such turn of events. I am ready to fight and win again. The race, I really liked it. The stages that I’ve seen were very different. I of course have no regrets about my participation in the event. It’s a pity we weren’t able to finish and fight for the podium.
Boris Gadasin: I enjoyed the rally. Organization and routes were at their best. I am of course more used to the short races and long road sections between the Stages were quire distressful. I consider this a good rehearsal for the united cup in 2011 where Bajas and long marathons will be united in one series. And of course it was really pleasant to compete with Volkswagen works crews. It was gratifying to see the such professional crews and all the team in real fight and not just on the TV screens, to be challenged if I can keep up with the Volkswagen’s speed. My main result of the competition was our recognition as rivals by Volkswagen team, and how the crews and the management of the team interacted with us when they saw the speed we can keep up with. This was my highest award at the race. Of course one can not escape accidents – motorsport is a dangerous sport and even very careful teams driving to finish can not totally prevent the risk.
There was a positive surprise at the race as well. Our novice crew of Alexey Sergeev and Alexey Korotayev who were driving rally raid proto car for the 1st time at the start of the race not only succeeded in finishing the race. They also showed good results at some of the stages. We will later publish detailed interview with their impressions from driving G-Force Proto that was the one to introduce them into world of rally raids.
We have also uploaded first share of our photos from Silk Way which do not have too much action shots but there are some shots that convey the spirit of the race.