The Russian Rally-Raid Championship‘s Baja Sibirskiy Trakt does not start until Thursday, but KAMAZ-master already has some work to take care of. On their way to the race in Ulyanovsk, one of their trucks was involved in a road accident that resulted in damage to the grille. Nobody was injured.
The accident occurred on the highway just outside the village of Belaya Gora in Tatarstan leading to Chistopol. In an onboard camera released by the team, the car in front of the truck collided with another truck in the oncoming lane. The KAMAZ truck swerved right to avoid debris from the contact while the car drifted and spun into the grass on the side of the road.
A chunk from the car shot into the KAMAZ’s front radiator grille. The car itself suffered serious damage to its left front.
The team’s other vehicles stopped at the scene to attend to those involved, which included every competing truck.
KAMAZ-master eventually released a statement on Telegram along with the onboard that read, “Dear drivers, please be careful on the road! It was only by sheer luck that there were no injuries in this road incident.”
The Baja Sibirskiy Trakt, the penultimate round of the Russian Rally-Raid Championship, will see five KAMAZ trucks take part driven by Eduard Nikolaev, Dmitry Sotnikov, Andrey Karginov, Anton Shibalov, and Bogdan Karimov. The accident continues an inauspicious stretch for the team, having been defeated by rival MAZ-SPORTauto at the last race, the Silk Way Rally in July (the truck category did not appear at the RAFRR’s Baja Prince Vladimir in August); it was just the second time in Silk Way history that KAMAZ did not win the event.