This year, the Silk Road will take place from 5 to 15 July. The transcontinental race will cover 5,243 kilometres, of which 2,992 are high-speed sections. The rally will connect several regions of Russia with regions of Mongolia and the Gobi Desert.
Sergei Shalygin is taking part in the Silk Road for the eleventh time.
“Tynda is my little homeland,” explains the driver. “I have lived in this town since I was seven years old and my mother built it. Now we are all preparing for the anniversary of BAM: the celebrations are planned, but everything is decorated. Right now I have a race and I decided to celebrate the anniversary in my own way: by decorating our car with BAM symbols. Usually, cars in international competitions are covered with sponsor logos, but we don’t have sponsors. So let the world know about BAM!”
The Silk Road participants consider Shalygin’s crew to be the mascot of the race. If his opponents have an accident, he will surely stop and help. Even if penalty points are awarded for a delay at a stage. At the same time, Sergei’s results are decent: he always makes it to the finish line, which not everyone manages to do, and he has won awards several times. In addition, the crew covers the entire route without technical support – only a car and experience. And this year the team was also updated: the off-road ace took a new co-driver into the team.
Nikita Erzhenin, 27, from the town of Slyudyanka in the Irkutsk region, also believes that the BAM builders achieved a feat worthy of the attention and memory of generations. Nikita comes from a family of railway workers: his grandparents came to work on the Trans-Siberian Railway when they were very young.
“I have long dreamed of taking part in a rally,” said Erzhenin. “That is why Sergei Aleksandrovich accepted me into the team. I have a big responsibility: to keep the car in good order, because the driver is also in good order during the race. I am a mechanic, but I can do everything. I have been doing repairs, maintenance, restoration of cars for a long time, and of course the car was as ready as possible for the start.”
“I have known Nikita since childhood, I am friends with his father,” Sergei Shalygin revealed the secret of the new navigator’s appearance. “As a child, he was in love with cars, but now he has grown up and it turns out that he knows and can do a lot.”
The team’s plans also include an educational route: according to tradition, on their return from competitions, participants stop in towns and villages along the way and tell schoolchildren where they were, what they saw and how they acted. This time they will also talk about the BAM builders.
All this is still ahead. Meanwhile, the crew is preparing for the race.
By the way
This year, the Silk Way Rally is also celebrating its 15th anniversary. The race starts on July 5 in Tomsk. It will pass through the Altai Territory and the Altai Republic, northern and western Mongolia, the Gobi Desert and will finish in 10 days in Ulaanbaatar. Athletes from Russia, China, Mongolia, Spain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan and other countries are taking part in the rally. Racers on trucks, SUVs, motorcycles and all-terrain vehicles will have to cover more than five thousand kilometers of steep passes, off-road terrain and rocky deserts.
