The KAMAZ-master team came in on 1st and 2nd position after 12 stages and won for the 17th time the famous DAKAR 2020 supported by Goodyear as their official tyre partner.
Goodyear Support KAMAZ-Master Team in Dakar 2020 Win
For many years, the Dakar has been known as the toughest rally in the world with the rally this year headed for new horizons in Saudi Arabia. With 7500 kms, including 5,000 km of specials of hi-speed and close racing ahead of them, the teams did not know what to expect from this new continent.
From the start in Jeddah on January 5th, this year’s edition had no mercy with the teams. At each stage of the race, the trucks encounter a large variety of challenges from tricky desert tracks with hidden stones to rocky canyons and river beds with sharp objects.
In these conditions, it is capital, to monitor the heat in the tyre. At all times, the drivers have to master their driving skills and carefully manage the tyre pressure to get a good balance between grip/traction, speed and durability.
“This year’s race included hazardous sandy dune stages and misleading labyrinths covered with sharp stones. We encountered many risky situations, but the Goodyear tyres kept on going offering supreme traction driving up the dunes and were extremely robust,” Andrey Karginov, driver of the winning crew 511 of KAMAZ-master concludes.
“At Goodyear, we design our products to deliver winning performance for our partners. We are extremely proud that once again the victorious KAMAZ-master team could count on exceptional qualities of our standard products proven in probably the toughest race in the world” says Maciej Szymanski, Director Marketing Europe for Commercial Business Unit at Goodyear. “This reconfirms very strong track record of Goodyear OFFROAD ORD tyres in durability, traction on rocky and sandy terrain and in very challenging circumstances at hi-speed.”
For ASO-organizer of the Dakar Rally- it’s mandatory that all truck teams compete on standard tyres. These must be developed for normal daily operations and can be bought by any fleet manager in the market. Giving the extreme driving, races like Dakar are the ultimate testbed for the Goodyear OFFROAD ORD.
The tyres selected by the winning KAMAZ-master team, are normally used to maximise uptime in tough off-road operations such as mines and quarries. Their tread pattern with massive blocks along with the optimised compound provides high resistance to tearing and cutting.
Likewise, the FIA European Truck Racing Championship is enabling the company to take its development process to the next level. Extreme testing conditions stress the carcass to cope with deformation and extreme forces on the tyre caused by jumps like in the Dakar as well as cornering at hi-speed in truck racing.
Result is the advanced Goodyear carcass technology offering enhanced durability and robustness, ultimately having a positive effect on fuel efficiency across the full portfolio including on-road long-haul and regional haul, mixed-services, off-road as well as bus and coach tyres.
