“Simbirsk tract”: day two

The second day of the Simbirsk Tract Baja turned out to be frosty – the thermometer dropped to 13 degrees below zero. The puddles that still remained in the ruts on the highway turned to ice overnight. Moreover, many froze right to the ground. In some places, the road turned into a real skating rink, so those crews who relied on spikes and changed their racing cars to special rubber certainly did not make a mistake.

The menu of the day included two laps of 100 kilometers each with a service and refueling area between them. The first to open the track for Saturday’s special stage was the crew of the GAZ Raid Sport team, Alexander Semenov and Dmitry Okhotnikov. They sped off very cheerfully from the start, but made a little mistake in navigation and lost time, letting the faster crews of the T3 buggy competition go ahead, as well as the Gazelle NN of teammate Alexey Ignatov and the Nissan Pathfinder of Mikhail Rastorguev. As a result, at this special stage, Alexander Semenov and Dmitry Okhotnikov were able to show only the sixth time in the “absolute” and the third in the raid-sport standings.

Alexander Zhikharev Alexander Zhikharev Alexander Zhikharev Alexander Zhikharev Alexander Zhikharev Alexander Zhikharev

And the Arkhangelsk crew of Pavel Andreev, competing in the T3 buggy category, scored the first time at the finish of the second special stage. Boris Gadasin finished behind him, 46 seconds behind, and Andrey Novikov, almost two and a half minutes behind the leader. Both crews are from St. Petersburg and perform on G-Force T3GF cars from the workshop of Boris Gadasin. Alexey Ignatov from the GAZ Raid Sport team showed the fourth time in the overall classification and the first in his raid sport class.

“Based on the results of the second special stage, we realized that the pace we had chosen allowed us to stay in the lead, but our main competitor Mikhail Rastorguev stayed very close to us, just two minutes behind,” Alexey Ignatov sums up the day. “At the third special stage, I decided that the first I’ll drive the section more dynamically to control Rastorguev. But along the way, somewhere towards the middle of the third special stage, we saw his crew standing on the side of the road, changing a tire. Accordingly, the task became even easier for us, and we calmly, at the same slow pace, continued to move towards the finish. As of today, we have already gained a total of 8 minutes of advantage, which gives us a comfortable position heading into tomorrow.

Alexander Zhikharev Alexander Zhikharev Alexander Zhikharev Alexander Zhikharev Alexander Zhikharev

At the third special stage, the crew of Boris Gadasin became the best. Andrey Novikov firmly established himself in the top three, repeating the result of the previous round. Alexey Ignatov kept a confident pace and again scored the fourth time in the “absolute” category. Alexander Semenov also increased his speed, and was even able to get around Mikhail Rastorguev, especially since the latter punctured a tire and spent time replacing it.

Alexander Zhikharev Alexander Zhikharev

At the end of the second racing day, the standings were topped by Pavel Andreev from the 404 Racing Team, and G-Force Motorsport driver Boris Gadasin was just 8 seconds behind him, and Andrey Novikov was also just 4 minutes behind the current leader. Therefore, the battle for places on the podium on the next, final day will be very hot.

The crew of the GAZ Raid Sport team of Alexey Ignatov and Evgeniy Pavlov, based on the results of two days, is in fourth place in the general classification and is in the lead in the raid sport category. But their teammate Alexander Semenov is literally “breathing down his neck” by Mikhail Rastorguev – Semenov’s advantage is only 8 seconds – by rally-raid standards this is nothing. The GAZ Raid Sport crew needs to try very hard to maintain their position and finish tomorrow almost flawlessly.

Alexander Zhikharev Alexander Zhikharev Alexander Zhikharev Alexander Zhikharev

“We started the first lap in the lead and drove like an opener,” said Alexander Semenov. “And we got a little lost in navigation.” On the second lap we started to increase the pace, to win back the four minutes that we lost. Today the road was different from yesterday. There was light snow in places and there was ice, especially in the forests. Where there were frozen puddles, we simply drove with open throttle and did not slow down. This gave an advantage. Moreover, this time they installed studded tires and made the right choice, because initially they wanted to drive on regular summer tires. And the spikes really started to work. It was thanks to them that we gained 8 seconds from Mikhail Rastorguev. Tomorrow we have, I think, a hard day ahead of us.

But in the standings for serial T2 SUVs, the situation is the same: the S&A Racing crew of Andrey Sushentsov is in the lead, Vadim Novikov from the UAZ-Sport team is second, and the Kolomna crew of Leonid Petrov is in third place.

Alexander Zhikharev Alexander Zhikharev Alexander Zhikharev Alexander Zhikharev Alexander Zhikharev Alexander Zhikharev Alexander Zhikharev Alexander Zhikharev Alexander Zhikharev Alexander Zhikharev

The third final day is very important. It will be decisive not only for athletes and their sports cars, but also for participants in production cars who are driving the “Simbirsk Trakt” baja in the “Tourism” category of the off-road series Hills of Russia. And here the GAZ Raid Sport team exhibited two serial Sobol NN 4×4 SUVs. The car recently went on sale, but has been performing confidently in off-road conditions all season. Andrey Sofonov, managing director of the Gorky Automobile Plant, and Nikolai Markov, head of the plant’s press service, personally test the cars and check how reliable they are on slippery winter roads.

Alexander Zhikharev Alexander Zhikharev Alexander Zhikharev

“This season we are racing in Ulyanovsk for the second time, and I remember some sections of the special stages from the last autumn race,” said Nikolai Markov. “But the weather is different now, and the track plays with completely different colors. This is what makes Ulyanovsk interesting, because at different times of the year there can be different races in the same place. Today was a tough day as all the mud was frozen, the puddles turned to ice and the ruts turned to stone. There were a lot of potholes and a lot of shaking. In our competition, we have a high maximum speed of 80 km/h. And, of course, in order to fight with dignity against your opponents, you had to try to go close to the maximum limit. The cars held up, and both of our crews met the deadline, both with a small time difference. Soboli passed the test to the limit, we are satisfied. Now our crews occupy first and second places in the standings, and we will try to repeat the result tomorrow.

The final third day of the race and one last special stage with a length of 120 kilometers are coming up. The participants have no room for error, because the results in the standings are quite dense. And if Boris Gadasin can celebrate his victory in advance based on the results of the race and the season as a whole, then in the raid-sport classification the struggle continues, and how the places will be distributed in the end will be determined by the fourth and final special stage. /m

“Simbirsk Trakt”: day one Bakha Astrakhan: day two Bakha Astrakhan: finish in the dark!