Photo: KAMAZ
The crew led by Eduard Nikolaev and representing KAMAZ-master team became a winner of the 2019 Dakar Rally in the trucks category. Dmitry Sotnikov, another team representative, is in the second place. The third spot on the podium was taken by the Dutchman Gerard de Rooy (Iveco).
Today was a day of the tenth and final stage of the 2019 Dakar Rally. The Dutchman Ton Van Genugten (Iveco) was first to cross the finish line, Loprais was second, and Sotnikov third. The Eduard Nikolaev’s crew finished sixth in the last stage.
Nevertheless, in the racing overall classification for the trucks the crew led by Eduard Nikolaev won the first place. Dmitry Sotnikov hit the finish 25 minutes adrift. Gerard de Rooy, a Dutch from Iveco team, scored in the third place.
Thus, Eduard Nikolaev became a four-time (2013, 2017, 2018, 2019) winner of the Dakar as a pilot. He was a winner of the legendary rally one more time in 2010 as a mechanic of the crew under the command of Vladimir Chagin who is leading KAMAZ-master team today.
Just to recap, KAMAZ-master entered four crews for the 2019 Dakar. Earlier two crews representing this team were out of the race before its completion: Andrey Karginov was disqualified, and the crew of Ayrat Mardeev could not complete the race due to technical issues.
KAMAZ-master is the Dakar’s team boasting the highest number of awards won in the trucks category. The Russian team picked up gold in the glorious rally 16 times. Ranked second by a total of victories is Tatra that was a winner 6 times, and third is Mercedes (5 victories).
