After 11 days of racing, the Silk Way Rally came to a close on Tuesday. However, being the last stage and the second shortest in terms of timed sections doesn’t mean it should be taken lightly.

The final run to Gorno-Altaysk was filled with rocks and nine fords that ate away at tires regardless of how fast one was going. Oleg Pavlenko, who completed the stage without a rear brake, noted some riders had to help each other through the water crossings. The hood on Andrey Rudskoy’s G-Force BARS came off after going through a ford, so he had to stop and reattach it; by the time he reached the finish (second in T1), his legs were cramped from the cold water.

The terrain was so treacherous that Pavel Bortvin, Nail Khubbatullin, Grigory Lein, and Rustam Satrudinov opted to skip the Selective Section and use their final jokers to protect their bikes.

Roman Rusinov was the biggest victim of Tuesday’s course. He suffered a blowout just ten kilometers before the finish, forcing him and Dmitry Pavlov to spend roughly two minutes changing the tire. Despite winning the stage for T3 anyway, the sudden pit stop ate up too much time that Rusinov hardly moved up in the class overall and had to settle for third, missing out on defending his title by just 1:48.

“We’re very happy to finish; the special stage was very difficult,” Rusinov commented. “We got a flat tire, I think changing it took two or three minutes, but we were fast overall. I don’t know where we could have improved today because there were so many rocks. A very difficult special, a couple of difficult fords.

“Today, we willingly took a risk because we had a gap of about four minutes to the leader. In any case, that’s racing. We fought to the end.”

Navigation also proved to be tricky for many. Anton Shibalov, who led the Auto overall entering Stage 11, got lost for a bit so he decided to let teammate Almaz Akhmedov pass him and give him experience opening a stage. Akhmedov ended up going the wrong way himself so Shibalov went by him, though Akhmedov still set a faster time for the day of 1:31:21 (second overall) to Shibalov’s 1:37:03 (sixth overall and fifth in class).

KAMAZ colleague Bogdan Karimov topped the stage, beating Akhmedov by 4:16.

Ural’s Yuri Naiman also noted he was following MAZ’s Pavel Murylev until the latter started going in the wrong direction. Naiman stayed behind him as he continued to deviate from the route due to error, eventually passing him and being passed on three different occasions.

“We were in no hurry,” Naiman quipped. “We were driving calmly and weren’t being ordered to drive somewhere. We were doing great.”

Stage 11 winners

Auto

Class	Overall	Number	Driver	Team	Total Time
T1	5	204	Pavel Andreev	404 Racing Team	1:36:53
T2	27	216	Meylis Abdullayev	Federation of Automobile Sport of Turkmenistan	2:58:31
T3	7	205	Roman Rusinov	G-Drive Racing	1:37:58
T5	1	304	Bogdan Karimov	KAMAZ-master	1:27:05
Open	13	218	Amartuvshin Khasagkhuu	Rally Mongolia	1:45:26

Moto

Class	Overall	Number	Rider	Team	Total Time
Motorally 450	1	11	Murun Purevdorj	Team Mongolia	2:14:28
Motorally Quad	2	176	Alexey Zverev	RM Sport	2:42:52
Motorally Open	DNF	N/A	No Finishers	N/A	DNF
G-Moto Challenge	3	1	Oleg Pavlenko	MMK	2:44:11

Overall winners

Auto

Class	Overall	Number	Driver	Team	Total Time
T1	9	204	Pavel Andreev	404 Racing Team	30:22:19
T2	20	214	Merdan Toylyev	Federation of Automobile Sport of Turkmenistan	61:28:24
T3	5	209	Dmitry Cherkesov	Dmitry Cherkesov	29:31:45
T5	1	305	Anton Shibalov	KAMAZ-master	25:15:53
Open	10	223	Anatoly Kuznetsov	Anatoly Kuznetsov	34:54:44

Moto

Class	Overall	Number	Rider	Team	Total Time
Motorally 450	1	11	Murun Purevdorj	Team Mongolia	32:07:41
Motorally Quad	4	176	Alexey Zverev	RM Sport	43:03:23
Motorally Open	15	59	Grigory Lein	SWD Racing	165:57:21
G-Moto Challenge	2	30	Ekaterina Zhadanova	DRC Racing Team	35:12:48

Featured image credit: G-Drive Racing