The third day of the Simbirsk Trakt rally completely changed the situation in the winners’ camp – the leaders of the race quit the race one after another.
On December 8, Sunday, Pavel Andreev’s crew was the first to go to the start of the fourth special stage. And, since the main duel in the overall and T3 classification was between him and Boris Gadasin, and Andreev’s temporary advantage was negligible – only 8 seconds, both crews rode, as they say, “with all their money.”
Andrei Novikov also joined the race of leaders and claimed third place. However, fortune today was clearly not on the side of the small and nimble “kibitkas”. Andrei Novikov dropped out of the fight in the middle – the engine failed. The G-Force buggy was brought to the bivouac by tow truck.
Alexander Zhikharev 
Alexander Zhikharev
Then Pavel Andreev stopped on the highway with a faulty rear suspension. The crew “sunbathed” on the track for a long time, and Nikita Yurovsky’s crew on Niva carried them to the finish line. Moreover, the rear wheels had to be removed, and Pavel Andreev’s buggy literally plowed the ground.
Only a few minutes passed after Andreev stopped when Boris Gadasin got into an accident. His buggy stood on the track for several hours, then finally reached the finish line. The only conditionally “live” car in the buggy class was Boris Gadasin’s G-Force T3GT, the rest were retired.
Alexander Zhikharev 
Alexander Zhikharev
In the absence of competitors, the GAZ Raid Sport crews calmly reached the finish line, and Alexander Semenov was the first to cross the finish line of the fourth special stage. Behind him, just two minutes behind, Alexey Ignatov finished the race. Thus, at the end of the race, Alexey Ignatov took gold in the “absolute” and the raid-sport classification, and his teammate Alexander Semenov took silver in both classifications. A worthy victory, a serious fight and a lot of luck! At the end of the season, such completion of the Simbirsk Tract baja allows Alexey Ignatov to qualify for the “absolute” bronze at the end of the 2024 rally-raid season.
Alexander Zhikharev
“We had a simple task for today: to maintain the lead that we had developed over the previous two racing days,” said Alexey Ignatov. “We had about 8 minutes of superiority, which allowed us to choose a calm, comfortable pace, maintain our position relative to our competitors, and not have any technical problems.” problems and take care of the car. And we stuck to this strategy. But to our surprise, on the track we saw first one overall crew, then another, stopped with technical problems. Then we realized that we were becoming the leaders in the Russian Championship standings. And closer to the finish line we saw the third crew, which was fixing the breakdowns. For us, this is the first time in history that we were the first to drive through special stages, being the leaders of a stage of the Russian championship, and this added some excitement. This allowed not only to win the overall at the Simbirsk Trakt Baja, but also allowed us to rise to third place in the overall standings of the 2024 season.
But still, the final day was not an easy walk. All crews had to work.
Alexander Zhikharev
“A small special stage in fact, only 120 kilometers, of which the first 52 completely coincided right from the start with yesterday, so they were a little familiar,” navigator Evgeniy Pavlov sums up the day. “Then it became more interesting, since the next part was a mix of new sections and yesterday’s track, turned in the opposite direction. Do not relax, as there are many tracks that are confusing. However, we were first overall, so it was interesting in terms of orientation. I think that we worked the race perfectly, we calculated everything properly and went through it clearly. And as a bonus, we became the “absolute” winners!
Third place in the overall classification and the raid-sport classification of the Simbirsk Trakt went to the crew of Mikhail Rastorguev, whose Nissan Pathfinder performed a spectacular jump at the final special stage and demonstrated the incredible strength of its equipment and crew, since not every car can survive such a hard landing without consequences. not every athlete.
Alexander Zhikharev 
Alexander Zhikharev 
Alexander Zhikharev 
Alexander Zhikharev 
Alexander Zhikharev 
Alexander Zhikharev 
Alexander Zhikharev
In T2, on the fourth special stage, UAZ-Sport driver Vadim Novikov managed to overtake Andrey Sushentsov, but in the overall final classification, the undisputed leadership still remained with the S&A Racing crew. As a result, Andrey Sushentsov with gold and the championship in T2, and Vadim Novikov in second place. Third place in this category went to the Kolomna crew of Leonid Petrov and Anton Pletenev.
Alexander Zhikharev 
Alexander Zhikharev
There were no serious losses in the camp of standard cars competing in the Tourism category of the off-road series “Hills of Russia”. At SS4, Andrei Sofonov, managing director of the Gorky Automobile Plant, scored second place at the finish line, and Nikolai Markov, head of the plant’s press service, was third. But the advantage gained on the first day allowed the crew of Nikolai Markov and Egor Okhotnikov to win first place at the end of the race, and Andrei Sofonov and Oleg Nezhnov became second. Both Sobol NN 4×4 civilian vehicles successfully covered the entire route and completed the race distance without speeding or violations.
Alexander Zhikharev 
Alexander Zhikharev
“It was a great race,” sports director of the GAZ Raid Sport team Vyacheslav Subbotin is clearly pleased with the result. “No one expected that the final stage, so fleeting, would be so intense. It seems there are not many participants – only 15 crews, and even those began to leave one after another. The competitors were all serious: Vyacheslav Paputsky, Boris Gadasin, Pavel Andreev, Andrey Novikov – all fast and very strong crews vying for serious places. Today we kept a good pace, a little lower than our usual, because a strong finish was fundamentally important. And the chosen tactics were successful for us and played a positive role. Yesterday there were two laps of 100 kilometers, today – 120 km, and our pilots walked next to the leaders, almost not yielding to them. Our opponents had mistakes and breakdowns, but our athletes worked without a single blemish and took first and second place in the “absolute”, and also won gold and silver in the raid sport category. This is a wonderful result! Apparently, based on the results of the season, the crew of Alexey Ignatov and Evgeny Pavlov was able to win third place in the overall standings of the national rally-raid championship. But we are waiting for the official results and congratulate our guys on such a high achievement – gold and silver based on the results of the entire season in the Raid-Sport competition. Our Gazelles NN, our crews turned out to be the fastest, and this is already natural!
Alexander Zhikharev 
Alexander Zhikharev 
Alexander Zhikharev 
Alexander Zhikharev
The 2024 Russian Rally Raid Championship is over. After the official summing up in January 2025, we will tell you who the winner is. Now the athletes are preparing their technicians for new starts. In two months, the first race of the new season will take place in the Leningrad region – Northern Forest 2025! /m
“Simbirsk Tract”: day two “Simbirsk Tract”: day one Bach Astrakhan: day two
