Artur Ardavichus finished the 13th leg from Alashan Youqi to Zhongwei on his #310 IVECO Powerstar in 6th position, conquering the 4th place in the Silk Way Rally overall.
Dutchmen Ton Van Genugten and Gerard De Rooy crossed the finish line with their IVECO trucks in 8th and 12th place of the partial classification of SS13.
Today, 22 July podium finish in Xi'An, the scheduled special stage having been canceled due to bad weather.
Yesterday was the last leg of the 2017 Silk Way Rally, which took the competitors from Alashan Youqi to Zhongwei. The 100 km special stage scheduled for today, 22 July, has been canceled due to bad weather and the rally caravan will reach Xi'An with a simple transfer, so the results for this edition of Silk Way Rally are in.
Team PETRONAS De Rooy IVECO started early this morning with Gerard De Rooy at the start line at 6.43 on board his Powerstar #302. "It was a nice stage today but not for me: we lost half an hour and we stopped 3 or 4 times. We drove better in the second special stage even if we had some problems to the steering box. For us the Silk Way Rally has been an important test to get the feel of the new truck in preparation for the Dakar rally". The team leader crossed the finish line with a time of 3h01m00s in 12th position, achieving the sixteenth place in the overall.
Kazakh pilot Artur Ardavichus was the second member of the team to start from the Alashan Youqi bivouac: the newest driver of Team PETRONAS De Rooy IVECO took his #310 IVECO Powerstar to the finish line in 6h06m13s, 37m13s behind the winner. "It was a very hard stage, and I didn't like it very much: I really prefer surfing big dunes rather than driving up and down little ones. We drove all day in 5th and 6th gear, and never got higher gears. There was no speed, only up and down." Ardavichus finished his first Silk Way Rally fourth of the general overall, ahead of Siarhei Viazovich's Maz.
It was a good result for Ton Van Genugten too: he crossed the finish line of this stage in eighth position, ahead of Teruhito Suguwara, completing the daily track in 6h25m36s. "In the first part of the special there were many dunes: the rain made them harder because of the heavy sand. We needed to stop sometimes at the top of the dunes to see the best way to go on. The second SS we drove faster." The Dutch pilot was in sixth place of the overall.
Today 22 July the Silk Way Rally will reach Xi'An. The two-week marathon will end in the ancient capital of thirteen Chinese emperor dynasties after more than 9,500 km of marathon distance.
Stage 13 results – Silk Way Rally 2017
1. Dmitry Sotnikov (Kamaz) 5h29m00s
2. Anton Shibalov (Kamaz) +3m00s
3. Airat Mardeev (Kamaz) +5m18s
4. Siarhei Viazovich (Maz) +31m39s
5. Alexsandr Vasilevski (Maz) +33m58s
6. Artur Ardavichus (IVECO) +37m13s
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8. Ton Van Genugten (IVECO) +56m36s
12. Gerard De Rooy (IVECO) +3h01m00s
Overall classification – Silk Way Rally 2017
1. Dmitry Sotnikov (Kamaz) 43h45m38s
2. Anton Shibalov (Kamaz) +6m04s
3. Airat Mardeev (Kamaz) +23m12s
4. Artur Ardavichus (IVECO) + 2h40m27s
5. Siarhei Viazovich (Maz) +6h28m56s
6. Ton Van Genugten (IVECO) +9h39m10s
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16. Gerard De Rooy (IVECO) +321h25m54s
