Four GAZ sports cars started on July 10 from Red Square in Moscow to participate in the Silk Way Rally Marathon.
The GAZ Raid Sport team includes two GAZelle NEXT sports cars and two Sadko NEXT cars. The cars are manufactured on the basis of serial production of the Gorky Automobile Plant, which is part of the GAZ Group, one of the largest diversified industrial groups in Russia, Basic Element.
Four cars of the GAZ Raid Sport team started from Red Square in Moscow. Two GAZelles NEXT participate in the SUV category, two Sadko NEXT in the trucks category. In 15 days, the participants of the rally marathon will have to cover 9,599 km, of which 4,094 km are sports special stages. The team expects high-speed gravel roads and endless steppes of Kazakhstan, mud and clay roads of the Volga region, giant dunes and huge sandy massifs of the Gobi Desert, rains and extreme heat. The finish of the rally marathon will take place on July 22 in the Chinese city of Xi'an.
Sports cars are created on the basis of serial cars of the GAZ brand. Two GAZelles NEXT are powered by serial Cummins ISF 2.8 engines with special sports superstructures. Sadko NEXT vehicles are equipped with YaMZ-534 engines manufactured by the Yaroslavl Motor Plant of the GAZ Group. For several years of participation in difficult sports competitions, YaMZ power units have shown high reliability with the most severe operation at high temperatures. Thanks to special settings, YaMZ engines develop power up to 300 hp. at 2600 rpm and torque up to 1000 N∙m at 1800-2400 rpm. Characteristics of the Cummins ISF 2.8 engine: power - up to 200 hp. at 3800 rpm, torque - up to 520 N∙m at 2000-3200 rpm.
Technical support of the team is fully provided by GAZ Group vehicles. Among them are three powerful Ural NEXT off-road trucks equipped with a YaMZ-536 engine, five Sobol 4x4 SUVs and a GAZelle NEXT utility van.
Michelin took over providing the team with tires. The sports Sadko and Sadko NEXT are equipped with Michelin XZL tires, and the GAZelle NEXT and Sobol 4x4 are equipped with BFGoodrich All-Terrain KO2 tires. Based on the combination of characteristics, these tires provide the optimal combination of speed on dirt roads and patency in the sand and off-road.
The crews of the GAZ Raid Sport team: GAZelle NEXT, starting number 123 - the crew of Alexander Kostrukov and Evgeny Pavlov; GAZelle NEXT, starting number 128 - the crew of Mikhail Kostrukov and Oleg Nezhnov; "Sadko NEXT", starting number 320 - the crew of Boleslav Levitsky and Alexander Obukhov; "Sadko NEXT", starting number 322 - the crew of Mikhail Shklyaev and Alexander Laguta.
The team's vehicles can be tracked on the website of the team's partner, navigation solutions provider, Loc.Me at
Nasser Al-Attiyah of Qatar almost destroyed Toyota Fortuner during promotional events, and driver Andrei Rudsky caught fire due to problems with the battery! The whole world had to extinguish the car - only the racing one helped, dragging the burning car into the swamp in tow, where they managed to extinguish the flame.
Madness and checks
And after all, all this happens even before the solemn start of the marathon, which is scheduled for July 20. The day before, everyone - from racing teams to journalists - undergo mandatory checks, briefings and other mandatory procedures for competitions of this kind.
Recall that the Silk Road 2018 marathon started on July 20 in Astrakhan. By the end of the race on July 27 on Red Square in Moscow, the participants will have to drive more than 3,500 "combat" kilometers in the Astrakhan, Volgograd, Lipetsk, Tula and Moscow regions and the Republic of Kalmykia. Not everything, we repeat, goes smoothly.
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Media suffering
For example, to be accredited to the press, you need to get a Media badge. It is given out in the building of the Astrakhan State Opera and Ballet Theatre, but to get there, you have to show the security guard at the entrance ... Media badge. The organizing committee has to break these vicious circles manually, which brings its share of madness to the already seething international racing anthill.
Literally at the walls of the theater, which for the weekend turned from a temple of culture into a place of service to the racing gods, technical checks of racing equipment are being carried out. Growling with engines, giant racing trucks and miniature, passenger prototypes and press cars crawl one after another, which will not fall into the rally classification, but will go along the same roads as the combat crews.
The Silk Road service park is set up at the Astrakhan Central Stadium, so that all residents and guests of the city who are not indifferent to racing cars can watch the mechanics work with their own eyes. However, even if you don’t care about motorsport, then you can’t get away from it in the next few days.
Astrakhan literally lives with a marathon - racing cars scurry about in city traffic, hotels are packed with participants, and parking lots are lined with official cars of the race organizers.
GAZ for us
But the focus, of course, is the participants. Eyes are on the team that will fight for victory in the truck standings with MAZ-SportAvto and.
The Gaz team, by the way, is the only one that exhibits domestic cars not only in the category of trucks, but also in the class of passenger SUVs. All-wheel drive prepared by GAZ Reid Sport have already proved that they are able to fight on equal terms with the prototypes of MINI, Peugeot, Toyota and other famous brands. And in 2018, the second generation of gas racing cars will go on the Silk Road, which take into account the experience gained. The modified one promises to bring surprises in 2018 - pleasant for GAZ Raid Sport and not so much for their rivals.
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Well, among them there are many legends of world rally-raids - two-time winner of the legendary Dakar Qatari Nasser Al-Attiyah, fast British Harry Hunt and experienced Frenchman Mathieu Serradori. True, for some reason the organizers will name the full one only at the solemn launch ceremony, so other pilots that are significant for rally raids can be added to these names.
The road surface changes literally with every kilometer: there was just perfect asphalt - and now the primer with holes in half a wheel. The gas station noted in the "legend" turns out to be a KAMAZ tanker parked on the side of the road ... And no trees, no shade. Together with the GAZ Raid Sport team, I accompanied the Silk Way rally raid from Moscow to Alma-Ata.
Dakar-2016 champion Gerard de Rooy, who competes at Iveco, said during his visit to the beginning of summer: they say that Vladimir Chagin constantly calls him and invites him to the Silk Road. But if the route of the race did not pass from Moscow to Beijing, but vice versa, de Rooy would take part! And so - no, because it would have to wait a long time for the return of the car from Beijing, and they would not have time to prepare it for the next Dakar.
So, neither de Rooy, nor the Czech Dakar hero Ales Loprais, nor the prize pilots at MANs and the GINAF factory team arrived at the current race, which, of course, reduced the "cargo" degree of the event.
A black bonnet has been added to the traditional line of blue and white KAMAZ trucks
However, there was still some intrigue - connected with the confrontation between the two hoods. As you know, last year KAMAZ built a “nosed” car with a Mercedes Zetros cab, but its debut was not particularly successful: springs burst, a radiator pierced due to an unfortunate location, there were complaints about the rented Gyrtech engine (this is a Caterpillar, converted by the Czech team Buggyra ). Now, more durable springs have been installed on the car, and the radiator has been "lit" with an intercooler, shifting back.
The debutant of the "Silk Road", Renault Sherpa's bonnet worker, immediately took third place in the "cargo" standings. Sherpa, like the "nosed" KAMAZ, not only folds the hood, but also the cab
The “big-nosed” Renault Sherpa, built on the eve of the Silk Road for the Dutch Mammoet Rallysport team on the same principle as KAMAZ, also became a direct competitor to this truck. A cab from the Sherpa 5 army model was installed on a racing chassis from a Renault K cabover (two of these cars also took part in the race). The engine is a 13-liter Volvo-Renault, the gearbox is a ZF AS Tronic “robot”. To be honest, we did not expect high results from this car, but you know what turned out?
Moscow—Kazan (845 km)
Together with my colleague Nikolai Markov, I set off on a Sobol 4x4 minibus with tail number 828. Although it was considered an escort vehicle and we did not go to the special stages, the rules of the race also applied to us. A Tripy device, issued by the organizers, was fixed on the windshield: it not only shows the route and distance to the end point, but also controls the speed. If you exceed the mark of 110 km/h a couple of times a day (90 allowed + 20 from above), you will receive a fine from the organizers, but such that the traffic cops will envy: about 500 euros!
The Sable 4x4 I was riding in front of a Soviet "billboard" in the middle of the steppe
Therefore, we tried not to drive, especially since the road from Nizhny Novgorod to Kazan is not very conducive to high-speed driving. Sometimes there are such terrible gouges on the pavement that even on Sobol with its high seating position it is uncomfortable. In addition, long traffic jams due to road works. As a result, we were safely late for the Kazan prologue of the race, where various crews (including the women's gas team on Sobol) stalled in the sand.
Kazan-Ufa (557 km)
Bashkiria greeted us with bad weather (because of which the special stage was canceled) and the lack of markings: there was - and no! In the evening, at the bivouac, I went to study the trucks of the caravan: in addition to military vehicles, more than a hundred cargo technicians participated in the rally-raid, including exotic "Chinese" - there were, among other things, Dongfeng with the wheel formula "Chinese Six", "Chinese Six" ( two axles in the front, one in the back), and Sinotruk with a motorhome made from a container.
Chinese motorhome on Dongfeng chassis with two axles in front
Against their background, gas technicals based on the new Next Urals looked very dignified: they have two-row cabs, where the back row turns into a sleeper, hefty bodies with a workshop in front and a warehouse for spare parts in the back. And also - the modified power unit and transmission: the engine power was raised from 312 to 330 hp, the speed limiter was removed at 90 km / h, the main gear was installed 6.77 instead of 7.49.
Before the "Silk Road" GAZ Group built technical equipment on the basis of the new Ural Next
Ufa-Kostanay (721 km)
We had to leave very early in order to make a marathon run to Kostanay and photograph the racers at the ford near the border with Kazakhstan along the way. The most beautiful Ural mountain roads, serpentine passes... But where are the long-range trucks that usually fill the track? At roadside parking lots, where they were driven by traffic cops during the passage of the caravan! As for the Silk Road cars, it seems that the traffic police had an order not to touch them: in front of my eyes, foreign escort cars were overtaking through a continuous one in full view of the inspectors - and they averted their eyes.
An ancient ZIL-130V with a semi-trailer bus works at the Kostanay airport
On the border with Kazakhstan, an adventure awaited us: we almost slipped through without checking. We didn’t have time to drive a hundred meters from the checkpoint, as we see in the mirrors, they are shouting and waving their hands from behind. Forgot to go through Kazakhstani passport control! Polite border guards apologized for our own oversight - however, just as politely added that if we had not returned, they would have every right to open fire ...
Kostanay-Astana (723 km)
After the bivouac in the border Kostanay - a straight line, like an arrow, going beyond the horizon. There is not a hint of civilization around: only occasionally a power line comes up to the road, and once in 50-70 km some settlement flashes by. It would seem, turn on the cruise control and relax. It was not there: suddenly, unmarked road repairs can begin with asphalt cut to the ground - and such places last not hundreds of meters, but kilometers.
And this is the “charged” Gazelle Next by Vyacheslav Subbotin, whose Cummins turbodiesel is boosted to 200 hp. and 500 Nm
And on the special stage that day, the crew of the fastest MAZ under the control of Sergey Vyazovich was unlucky: the exhaust pipe overheated and cracked, and the pneumatic tubes burned because of it. Mazovians had to fix it all...
Astana-Balkhash (618 km)
Behind Astana, the realm of new buildings, we leave for roads of local importance - also very diverse. For 200 kilometers of such tracks, the surface changed thirty times: either asphalt of different colors, then crushed stone, or even soil. After we drove away from the gas station, the thermometer on which showed + 38 ° C, there was an unexpected stop: the left front wheel gnashed. They took it off and found a pebble stuck between the brake disc and boot.
We had just arrived at the ford (which turned out to be too tough for our Sable), as the pilot of one of the passing crews shouted to us that a “combat” Gazelle had turned over a kilometer from here. But we are not allowed to drive on the race track - and I ran through the heat. I don’t advise anyone to repeat it: after five hundred meters of such a run, I realized that I was exhausted, and when our Sable drove up (he had to go around the steppe), he drank, without stopping, three-and-a-half-liter bottles ... with water, of course .
We were the first to arrive at the scene of the accident of Stefan Petransel's buggy. Fortunately, after a series of coups, the crew was not injured.
And the “overturned Gazelle” turned out to be Stefan Petransel’s Peugeot: the driver did not notice the bump on the high-speed section, and the car made as many as six revolutions through the roof. The crew was alive and even intact - but we were forbidden to offer help, and even more so to tow the injured car, since both us and the riders could be disqualified for this. If the damage to the car turned out to be too serious, the crew had to wait for their technical service or “broom” - a KAMAZ tow truck. But Petransel with the co-driver managed to bring the car back to life and continue the race - albeit with a six-hour delay.
Balkhash-Alma-Ata (641 km)
Due to the strong wind, part of the special stage was canceled, where a beautiful shooting point was located. Therefore, we had no choice but to meet the participants at the intermediate finish and go to Alma-Ata.
Kazakh-style rally: tractor Belarus drags livestock Gazelka with livestock in the back across the ford
In the Gobi desert, two cargo racers made “ears” at once: Andrey Karginov at KAMAZ and Sergey Vyazovich at MAZ. But just Vyazovich (who was quickly put on wheels by other Mazov trucks) became the best in the Minsk team - sixth in the final standings.
The gas crews of Vyacheslav Subbotin and Tatyana Eliseeva successfully finished in China (albeit in the top ten among the "passenger" racers), their colleagues, the Kostrukov brothers, completed the race in Alma-Ata - and one of them, Mikhail, won the stage of the Russian championship in the Raid- sport.
Tatyana Eliseeva - pilot of the female crew of the gas team
When this issue was being prepared for publication, Fedor Lapshin tested the Ural Next technical equipment off-road near Yekaterinburg, more on that in the next issues of the column.
Rally "Silk Way-2017" is 9599 km from Moscow to Xi'an, the ancient capital of China, through Kazakhstan. Of this distance, 4094 km are occupied by special stages: country roads washed out by rains, bumpy dirt roads in the Kazakh steppes, steep mountain slopes and, of course, the Gobi and Takla Makan deserts. Of the 51 crews that started from Red Square, 20 did not even make it to China. The reputation of the most difficult rally-marathon was justified. How did the GAZ Reid Sport team show itself in this test?
Apart from escort vehicles, 2 Gazelles-Next and 2 Sadko-Next participated in the race. One Sadko retired due to a pilot error, the rest finished safely. Moreover, Gazelles showed good results: 3rd and 4th place in their class, 11th and 13th places in the general classification. Note that in this marathon, last year's Dakar winner Gerard De Rooy came last, and rally legend Sebastien Loeb crashed and left the race. The captain of the gas team, Vyacheslav Subbotin, explains: the matter is in the reliability of the cars and the skill of the pilots, 50 to 50. Cummins 2.8l engine, boosted to 200 hp. with., without problems withstood the heat of the Gobi desert. Gazelles went steadily and sometimes breathed into the back of the head of the unconditional favorites of the race - KamAZ trucks. Sobol 4×4 escorts did not disappoint either. According to Konstantin Gusev, a member of one of the crews, Sobol passed the Gobi desert calmly, "as if it were a rally-raid in Kalmykia."
It is no secret that the Silk Road is perceived by many as a training session before the Dakar, which is due to take place in January 2018. This can be argued, but the experience of the past rally for the GAZ Reid Sport team will definitely come in handy.
Russian Gazprom, Kazakh KazMunayGas and Chinese company PetroChina signed a memorandum of long-term cooperation in developing a network of gas filling facilities using the infrastructure of the New Silk Road. The parties expressed their interest in developing the market for gas-powered vehicles through the formation of a gas transportation infrastructure on the China-Europe route. The document contains estimates of the potential number of these vehicles and the volume of consumption of gas motor fuel on the Russian, Kazakh and Russian sections of the route in the period up to 2030. The analysis carried out will form the basis for the development of a phased plan for creating a network of gas filling stations.
In November 2016, Gazprom and PetroChina, a subsidiary of China National Petroleum Corporation, entered into an agreement to start cooperation in this area. In May 2017, Gazprom, CNPC, Russian Highways and China Communications Construction Company signed a memorandum of cooperation, which concerns, in particular, the use of natural gas as a motor fuel.
The China-Europe transport corridor is an element of the Chinese New Silk Road project, which provides for the creation of new land and sea infrastructure. The concept was presented in the fall of 2013, China uses it as a weapon of its "soft power". About 40 billion dollars have been allocated for the projects included in it, which are managed by the Silk Road Fund.
Environmental protection spurs China's gas boom
Russian gas can become a tool for the Chinese to achieve several goals of the country's economic policy. Beijing is fighting urban air pollution, and the development of gas transport can help in this. LNG truck sales could hit record highs as pollution control measures include restrictions on diesel-powered vehicles, Reuters reports. In the first seven months, sales growth was 540%. This is due, in part, to the ban on the use of diesel trucks when transporting coal from northern ports, where air pollution is the highest. As part of the fight against smog, the Chinese authorities also plan to provide gas to about 1.4 million households in this region.
Beijing does not depend on Russian gas: to cover its needs, it can use its own resources or LNG supplies from anywhere in the world. China's gas consumption will grow by 8.1% by 2030, compared to the global average of 2.1%, according to the China National Petroleum Corporation think tank. The International Energy Agency predicts that China will account for 40% of global natural gas demand growth in the coming years.
Due to the weak prospects for increasing gas production (including shale), China, which is now one of the three leaders in the development of unconventional deposits, behind the US and Canada, will focus on LNG. The volume of Chinese shale gas reserves is estimated at 764.3 billion cubic meters. Meanwhile, in June, the volume of LNG imports to the Celestial Empire increased by 95% compared to the same period last year. The Chinese bought 3.12 million tons of this fuel. In January-July 2017, the volume of liquefied gas imports reached 19 million tons (an increase of 45%). The suppliers were mainly Australia and Qatar, while China ranked third in the list of the world's largest LNG importers.
In this context, the plans to launch the Power of Siberia gas pipeline from Russia to China, which are planned to be put into operation on December 20, 2019, look promising. The design capacity of the gas pipeline is 38 billion cubic meters per year, but at the first stage, the volume of supplies will be only a few billion tons. The problem may be the fact that, as the press reported, the price of gas is tied to the price of oil, and its quotes are now fluctuating around $55 per barrel. This means that the cost of the contract between Gazprom and CNPC will fall to the margin of profitability or even lower. Talk that the "Power of Siberia" could bring losses to the Russians began already when oil cost $100.
Perhaps in this regard, the Russians are pinning their hopes on the Yamal LNG project, which is conceived to work with Asian markets. Within its framework, in 2019 it is planned to launch an export gas terminal with a total capacity of up to 16.5 million tons per year. The resource base will be the Yuzhno-Tambeyskoye gas field, the license for the development of which belongs to Gazprom. However, Yamal LNG is an initiative of the concern's potential competitor in the Russian market: Novatek. The project received support from the Silk Road Fund (it owns 9.9% of the shares), which also demonstrates China's priorities. The remaining shareholders are Novatek (60% of the shares), the Chinese corporation CNPC and the French Total (20% each).
Rapprochement or the threat of dominance?
It is still difficult to say how much the New Silk Road project will bring China closer to Russia, and how much it will strengthen Beijing, weakening Moscow. The Russians are trying to compensate for their growing dependence on the Celestial Empire by "Russifying" the route, that is, using it for gas supplies. Evidence of this can be the fact that Russia is trying to persuade China to direct the investments of the Silk Road Fund to the so-called Ice Silk Road - the Primorye-1 and Primorye-2 maritime transport corridors in the Arctic. Chinese funds can help Russians develop the Northern Sea Route and increase the volume of blue fuel sales.
Moscow needs Chinese partners because of Western sanctions that have affected the oil sector and, in particular, the companies Gazprom Neft, Rosneft and Novatek. Sanctions made it impossible for them to cooperate with partners from the European Union and the United States, which limited their opportunities in the field of investment and technology.
Transfer of know-how, for example, in the sector of unconventional mining is completely blocked. The Chinese can provide the funds, but information on shale oil development will be more difficult because they don't yet have the technology themselves. The determination of the Russians to compete for Asian funding makes them dependent on China, which benefits from this state of affairs. In this case, he can use "soft power", that is, to promote his interests under the banner of the "New Silk Road" project.
“The process of implementing the concept of the Way will allow China to expand its political influence in neighboring countries of Central and Southeast Asia. The new Silk Road will become a counterbalance to the dominance of the United States, as well as Russian integration projects in this region,” writes an expert from the Warsaw Center for Oriental Studies Marcin Kaczmarski(Marcin Kaczmarski). He notes that the Chinese will be able to get a base to strengthen their political authority, and Gazprom will receive gas supply contracts in return. The question is, will this be sufficient compensation for dependence on a superior partner?
