The decision made by MAZ Sport Auto Team: the commentary of Rally Director Vladimir Chagin

Today MAZ Sport Auto Team posted on Instagram an unexpected message on their decision to quit the race. Using rather strong wording (“organisers have inferfered in the race”, “corrections to the racing stage”) the authors of the release accused rally organisers of providing unreasonable advantage to “certain competitors”.

Rally Director Vladimir Chagin gave his comments on the current situation:

‘Sergey Vyazovich is a talented racer, but apparently the challenges of third stage, faced by his crew and the entire MAZ Sport Auto Team, don’t let him to be fair in his opinions.

I want to emphasize that Silk Way Rally is an international project, it has always met the standards of FIA and respected the honest ethics, which is strictly controlled by both sporting stewards and rally directorate.

At the beginning of yesterday’s stage the weather suddenly started to change, and the heaviest rains made the route impossible to go through. Pilots had to adapt to weather conditions, and organisers’ responsibility was to ensure safety and not to jeopardize the future racing process. That is why sporting stewards have decided to stop the race on the KM 140.

I want to thank all the crews that helped each other in that situation, including the crew of Boleslav Levitsky and Vladimir Shklyaev from GAZ Raid Sport Team and the one of Anton Shibalov from KAMAZ-master Team, which pulled out the vehicle of Sergey Vyazovich twice on that day. This year we are particularly pleased to see how the crews give a hand to each other. In rally raids it is impossible to reach the finish or to win without it.

As Rally Director, on behalf of Silk Way Rally Directorate I am sorry for the emotional decision of Vyazovich to have the entire team quit the race, which denies the opportunity to continue to compete for other crews of MAZ-Sport Team. I hope that Silk Way Rally will always be a field for fair and uncompromising competition between the world’s strongest racers, and I definetely see MAZ Sport Auto Team as one of them.

Jean Marc BONNAY

2018 Silk Way Rally Clerk of the Course

FIA 25558 license

"At the request of the MAZ Sport Auto Team representative, we received competitor number 302 for a long time in the presence of the Director of the SWR organisation, Mr Vladimir Chagin.

After hearing both parties for a long time, the race direction considers that the organiser acted impartially in order to help competitors in difficulty in the selective section 3.

We take note of the decision of the MAZ Sport Auto Team to withdraw from the competition."