The equipment in the series is very interesting and advanced, and the track conditions proved a match: Sunday’s heat was a real test of the first leg of the Russian Endurance Challenge 2022. 43 athletes gathered at the Moscow Raceway nearby from Moscow, and four of them were girls.
The participants were divided into 20 crews and four classes – CN Sport Prototype, CN 1.6 Sport Prototype, GT Pro and GT.
BR03 prototypes on the Moscow racetrack
The BR Engineering team (Vitaly Petrov / Mikhail Aleshin, Viktor Shaitar / Sergey Sirotkin) on the new Russian BR03 prototypes from the early laps had a wonderful fight with the Blackthorn crew (Igor Mukhin / Egor Efrosinin) on the Ligier car . These teams shared the podium of the CN class in the final.
CN class podium
CN class
- BR Engineering 17 (No 17, Viktor Shaitar, Sergey Sirotkin) – 133 laps
- BR Engineering 11 (No. 11, Mikhail Aleshin, Vitaly Petrov) – 133 laps
- Blackthorn (No. 28, Igor Mukhin, Egor Efrosinin) – 132 laps
Marussia GT
And at the start of the second hour, one of the safety car departures occurred (there were three in all) – a bad fixed wheel came loose at full speed on the Marussia GT prototype (Vitaly Larionov) of the IY Engineering -team. But there was no hard start, the car spent 40 minutes in the pits – and finally made it to the podium!
GT Pro Class
- Capital Racing Team (No. 13, Denis Remenyako) – 136 laps
- Yadro Motorsport (No. 4, Sergey Stolyarov) – 133 laps
- IY Engineering (No. 7, Vitaly Larionov) – 83 laps
Yadro Motorsport (front) and Capital Racing Team fight
In the overall standings, the Mercedes of the Capital Racing Team (Denis Remenyako) and Yadro Motorsport (Sergey Stolyarov) took the win, as well as the aforementioned Russian BR03 cars. The case was decided by competent refueling, a change of pilots and the lack of fines. Stolyarov scored four penalty runs in the pit lane and rolled back to third.
Absolute ranking
- Capital Racing Team (Denis Remenyako) — 136 laps
- BR Engineering 17 (No 17, Viktor Shaitar, Sergey Sirotkin) – 133 laps
- Yadro Motorsport (No. 4, Sergey Stolyarov) – 133 laps
Overall winner
In the GT class, the denouement came in the final laps. An unfortunate puncture robbed Marat Khairov and Gabriele Pian of second place: while their BMW was changing the tire in the pits, another Bavarian (time4bmw, pilots Oleg Semenov and Egor Orudzhev) took the lead – at the finish they were separated by a little over 30 seconds.
GT class
- Motor Sharks (No. 83, Anton Nemkin, Ivan Lukashevich) – 130 laps
- Time4bmw (No 98, Oleg Semenov, Egor Orudzhev) – 128 laps
- APRTeam (No. 26, Marat Khairov, Gabriele Piana) – 128 laps
The basis of the Sport Prototype CN 1.6 class are Shortcut cars, and two crews including girls – experienced Tatyana Dobrynina in crew No. 44 (“Races and Tochka”) and her rival Olga Zinchenko (DK YMT – Your Marketing Team) on “shortcut ” No. 1 The main battle in this class unfolded between crews No. 88 (AZDRIVE SOUND C team) and the aforementioned crew No. 44. In qualifying, the former were faster, but in the race, thanks to the right-hand tactics Race and Point came out on top.
Tatiana Dobrynina
Class CN 1.6
- Races and Tochka (No. 44, Vadim Vereshchagin, Tatyana Dobrynina, Dmitry Solovov, Ivan Pugachev) – 103 laps
- AZDRIVE SOUND C (№88, Artem Viktorov, Alexander Butslov, Kirill Zakharov) – 101 laps
- DK YMT (No. 1, Olga Zinchenko, Stanislav Burmistrov, Alexander Galakhov) – 93 laps
Also in the context of the stage, the Moscow Championship was played in “long” races. The victory in this standings was won by the crew No. 17 of Viktor Shaitar and Sergey Sirotkin on the Russian prototype BR03. Second place went to the crew No. 11 of Mikhail Aleshin and Vitaly Petrov (also on BR03), and the third place went to the crew of Ligier No. 28 – Igor Mukhin and Yegor Efrosinin.
- The REC series calendar for the 2022 season includes four stages – more races are scheduled in St. Petersburg, Kazan and Sochi.
- “Behind the wheel” can be read in Odnoklassniki.
Under its banner, the Russian REC series has brought together eminent racers who have achieved world-class success.
Hot carousel: the first leg of the endurance races took place in Moscow