Dakar 2021 Stage 8 | Anton Shibalov takes the stage win

Team Kamaz-Master proved their worth in Stage 8 of the 2021 Dakar. Anton Shibalov took the win, followed by teammates Dmitry Sotnikov and Andrey Karginov. Sotnikov, the overall leader in the general rankings, was the first off the blocks but was quickly overtaken by reigning champion Karginov at the first checkpoint. However, Karginov wasn’t in a clear lead, with seven trucks all within the same minute!

The eight stage consisted mainly of smooth sand and soil, both those surfaces comprising 91 per cent of the total stage. The tarmac section was just eight per cent of the entire 375km special stage and the remaining one per cent was a salt lake. The eighth stage also featured a massive 334km liaison, which meant that competitors couldn’t really get around to servicing their vehicles between the two stages.

Aliaskei Vishneuski overtook the trio Kamaz-Master trucks, led by Shibalov, and was in the lead after the 225km mark. Vishneuski inched out a lead of almost one and a half minutes from that point till the final 60 kilometres of the stage, before the Kamaz-Master trucks started to close up. Vishneuski kept the lead until the last few kilometres of the stage, before all three Kamaz-Master trucks flew past him.

At the end of the stage, Dimitry Sotkinov along with Ruslan Akhmadeev and Ilgiz Akhmetzianov in his truck, retains their lead, primarily due to the fact that they haven’t finished below second place in the entire 2021 Dakar. Shibalov’s time of 3 hours 19 minutes and 40 seconds, put him almost two and a half minutes ahead of Sotkinov in second place. However, Sotkinov retains his lead in the overall rankings by a cumulative 43 minutes at the end of the eighth stage.

The first truck flies off the line from Neom today at the start of the ninth stage, which will consist of a 465km special and a liaison of 109km.

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