“Motor” in races: preparing for the battle of Moscow

The season of Russian ring racing enters the decisive phase. After the previous stage in Kazan, the Russian Championship in the top -end SMP TCR Russia took a pause in four weeks, now three final stages will take place within a month and a half. In the summer, our affiliate team Innostage Ag Team managed to please with success, and to encounter the most pleasant moments. In the next weekend, along the racing weekend on the Moscow Raceway highway, the team will make maximum efforts to take a positive trend.

Victory is great. Victory on the home track is doubly great. And when the first victory in the top class is mined on the home track, emotions are being built to power. It was such a superpore -positive point in Innostage Ag Team who survived a month ago at the Avtodrome in Kazan. The Sunday race in the capital of Tatarstan, in front of numerous friends and relatives, won Rustam Fathutdinov, the youngest and most emotional pilot of the team. For which this success was the first during the performances in the most prestigious class of the Russian series of ring racing.

The athlete’s path to this victory was not unable. For the first time, Rustam came to the SMP TCR Russia class five years ago. Having drove off one year, he dropped out of among the participants. After a while, he returned, but only to leave again, and in the midst of the season. During this time, there were several fins on the catwalk, but there were mistakes due to inexperience, and offensive breakdowns of middle -aged technology. A couple of times, the operators of direct broadcasts caught Rustam at the moment when he desperately beat his hand along the wall of the boxes.

This year, perhaps, for the first time Fathutdinov got behind the wheel of a car, which can be called modern. And this immediately affected performance. The first weekend of the season Rustam celebrated the finish in the first three. Before the stage, the racer from Kazan takes 5th place in the overall standings, only one point yielding to the pilot, located on a line above.

Innostage Ag Team

“Rustam continues to learn to work with the TCR machine and has achieved noticeable progress during the season,” the team manager Dmitry Dudin testifies – this car requires a very accurate and clear work with the gas pedal and with the brake pedal. For example, in less fast classes, the so-called trail break is not very often used, when at the entrance to the turn the racer deliberate for some time when the steering wheel is turned. And when driving by TCR machines, this technique is constantly used.

But progress in progress, and any pilot wants to win. And such an emotional person as Rustam is especially necessary. It was clearly seen that the lack of victories depressed him. Therefore, for the whole team, success in Kazan was a very bright moment. We expect that this will give Rustam a new impetus and will help to gain a foothold in the group of leaders.

The mystery of the slowed Audi

Anyone who carefully monitors our stories about the performances of Innostage Ag Team will ask: Rustam’s successes are wonderful, but Yegor Sanin is only in seventh place? Indeed, in May, after the first stage of the season, the racer from Ulyanovsk headed the general offset of the Russian championship. Why in the summer, Yegor could not stay even in the first five?

Innostage Ag Team

The reason for such a regression (during the three summer stages, Sanin never could finish in the first three) was the state of the machine on which Yegor – Audi RS3 LMS performs.

“There was clearly something wrong with her from the very beginning of the season,” says Dmitry Dudin, and the difficulty is that we have no one hundred percent understanding of the causes of the problem. Yes, we have an elderly motor, which ideally should be changed. But on this we must lose about half a second from the circle, and we lose a whole second.

Already at the first stage, Yegor said that the car behaves imperfectly, that somehow we are not so setting it up. But then we did not pay special attention to this, the good results shown at the opening of the season have a little relaxed. When Yegor was not too fast at the next stage, we wrote off it for the weight of the car. After all, as the most productive pilot of the first stage, he received 40 kg on board the ballast. In a word, we adequately appreciated the scale of problems only in the third and fourth stages.

And not only us. Some rivals come up and ask what we did with Yegor, where his speed went. Moreover, rivals in a sense help us to deal with this problem. After the stage in Kazan, we wanted to spend an unscheduled test day and try to identify the problem. But the tests in the top class are very limited. Usually this is one day immediately before the start of the stage, when it is already late to identify the problem – you need to look for speed. And unscheduled tests can be carried out only by receiving the consent of all other teams. Which by default are not inclined to give the opponents of the indulgence. But the presence of problems in our Audi was so obvious that we received consent from all groups. For which, by the way, thank them, by the way.

Innostage Ag Team

The process of finding the problem was so deep and difficult that it even came to personnel changes. But still now we are sure that the case is in the gland. In front of the Moscow Region, a car was partially dismantled, a number of important parts were replaced. We hope that these measures will correct the situation and Yegor will again gain speed.

Autodrom with a rich choice

In general, Moscow Raceway is well suited to bring Yegor good results after a series of failures. After all, it was at the Avtodrodsky near Moscow that the racer from Ulyanovsk won his first victory in “adult” competitions. I remembered with pleasure, writing down for us a traditional story about the track of the next stage:

– It was in 2013. I was 14 years old, and I was driving my first season in ring racing. And by the way, the Moscow Raceway was the first large and modern autodrome for me. I still remember how they went to the highway for the first time and how the first thing I saw the huge main stand. At that moment, the scale, of course, struck me.

If we talk about the features of the highway, then it is complex, demanding both the piloting and the settings of the car. Due to the fact that there are a lot of medium -rack turns that do not forgive mistakes. Of the memorable nuances, I would have noted the opportunity to choose a trajectory in a bend of several options close in speed. On the average racing highway there is some one logical trajectory. Here, different pilots, depending on their style, pass turns along different trajectories, and most of these options are fast. I myself have three variants of the trajectory in individual sectors, each of which I consider to be workers and can use in races.

Innostage Ag Team

How the car is in the air

Cars performing in the top class of the SMP RSKG can not be called high -tech. Firstly, they were created under mass (by racing standards) production. Secondly, the rules of the competition provides for a ceiling of prices, which is now amounting to 150,000 euros. Therefore, many especially complicated and simply expensive solutions in these machines have no place. However, there are also decisions that are not even on formula 1 car.

For example, in the boxes Innostage Ag Team cannot find a thing like a jack. But how then to raise a car to change the wheels, adjust the tickle-and-outlet (this procedure is carried out several times in the weekend) or, finally, repair? Everything is simple. If necessary, the mechanic opens a hatch under which the neck of the gas tank hides on a serial machine. Instead of the neck, there is a connector through which a cylinder with compressed air is connected. The car hides in the car. Pneumocracrates are hollow cylinders with metal rods inside. Having got inside the cylinder, the air pushes the bar down, it rests on the floor – and if the air continues to flow, the car body rises up and the wheels break off the ground.

However, you should not think that the designers of the Formula 1 cars missed the moment of the invention of pneumracrates. On the formulas, this solution is not used so as not to increase the mass of the car. While racing cars built on the basis of serial are initially quite heavy, and in percentage terms the presence of pneumaticocrats increases the mass of the machine slightly.

Innostage Ag Team

PIT Stop in SMP TCR Russia races is a rarity, since the races last only half an hour. But you can see the work of pneumaticocrats before the start. When the machine after the installation circle takes up a place on the starting grill, the mechanics usually change the front in places (the tires on which they warmed stronger) and the rear (with tires that warmed up) the wheels. So that in the course of the heating circle to the necessary, close to each other, the temperature of all four tires reaches each other.

So, if you want to see “bouncing” racing cars – do not be late for the beginning of direct broadcasts with the Moscow Raceway this weekend. The stunct will begin at 15:15, and Sunday at 13:20. If you want to see racing battles with the participation of Innostage Ag Team with your own eyes, then by this link you will find all the information you need to the audience. /m

Ours in races: Ahead of the home stage “Motor” in races: Start in the lower! Large races in the suburbs continue!