Teams participating in the Dakar Rally in 2021 are apparently now having to add helicopter crashes to the list of dangers. As if Dakar was not dangerous enough yet.
Watch this Kamaz pull up sweetly after rolling quickly over a dune, only to cut the runway of a low-flying press helicopter:
The scene unfolded in the 12th and final phase of the protest, along the Yanbu-Jeddah route in Saudi Arabia. The truck you see here comes from the KAMAZ masters team, and it is driven by Anton Shibalov.
Think how fast Kamaz would pull up such an entire helicopter without missing a mate. That rig is definitely not the right combination of mass and inertia to mess with. Someone has to tell the pilot of the helicopter that he has to respect anything so great, go so fast.
Despite the dispute with the flying plane, the Russian team’s no. 501 truck went second in the final phase of the event, and another KAMAZ master truck, no. 507, placed first. It led the team to a victory and that is a feature 18th overall victory in the Dakar Rally.
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A record like that will definitely make it worthwhile for the winners. In fact, the damage to the truck was by no means serious, and it seems that the hood of the hood did not do any damage to the truck cabin. Although I do not think the structural integrity of the truck was ever in question.
The next question is more relevant: What happened to the helicopter? In the video, we see the helicopter pull away quickly after colliding with the truck. And it does not seem to have caused much damage. The truck gets more coverage in the clip than the plane, but we can see that the helicopter pilot learned the lesson and then hangs back a bit and lets the Kamaz move forward.
We are glad that the helicopter was not thrown off balance off enough to cause an accident. Things could have ended very badly. But it ended happily – even if it was not for a helicopter, then definitely for the truck.