Teams taking part in the 2021 Dakar Rally must now add helicopter collisions to the rally’s danger list. As if Dakar wasn’t already dangerous enough.
Watch this Kamaz get a sweet lift after crossing a dune at speed, just to blink the skid of a low-flying press helicopter:
The scene took place in the 12th and final stage of the rally, along Yanbu-Jeddah route to Saudi Arabia. The truck you see here is from the KAMAZ master team and was driven by Anton Shibalov.
Think how fast Kamaz would get off a helicopter like that, never missing. That equipment is definitely not the right combination of mass and inertia to mess with. Someone should tell the helicopter pilot to respect anything so big, going so fast.
Despite the fight with the rotating wing aircraft, truck no. 501 of the Russian team continued to take second place in the final stage of the event, and another KAMAZ command truck, number 507, took first place. That led the team to victory and marks it 18th overall victory in the Dakar Rally.
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Such a record will definitely make all the bangs and tricks worthwhile for the winners. In fact, the damage to the truck was not serious in any way, and the helicopter’s skid did not appear to have damaged the truck’s cabin. Although I don’t think the structural integrity of the truck has ever been called into question.
The next question is more precise: What happened to the helicopter? In the video, we see the helicopter take off quickly after cutting the truck. And he doesn’t appear to have suffered major damage. The truck has a larger coverage in the clip than the aircraft, but we can see that the helicopter pilot learned the lesson and then gets stuck a bit, letting the Kamaz climb forward.
We are happy that the helicopter was not balanced enough to cause an accident. Things could have ended very badly. But it ended happily – if not for the helicopter, then definitely for the truck.