Racing Endurance popular worldwide. 24-hour marathon at Le Mans, Spa and the Nurburgring, a great race in the American daily Daytona, 6-hour event Endurance World Championship (WEC), which take place on the steepest slopes of the planet — events, incredible in its beauty and uniqueness. And everywhere on the grid, you can find the Russian athletes or crews, acting under the Russian flag.
Moreover, podiums and victories for our riders there are not uncommon — we quickly learn, and many want. Only now, unfortunately, to carry out an auto racing on its territory is no simple task. We need organizational experience, «roll forward» and finance. This is especially true of long races, where the requirements for each side of the process increases significantly. But to start with something you need.
On October 24 at Moscow Raceway was the first trial of 4-hour race Russian Endurance Challenge, which I hope will be the beginning of more than a large-scale revival in our country endurance races, the attempts of that in the early 2000s were made, but did not failed.
4- and 6-hour Polo Cup in 2002–2003.., 2-hour monocup VAZ-2112 «Autumn Marathon» in 2003, «Honda-Challenge-500» in 2004–2005.. — here, perhaps and virtually all of this took place in our country, or rather, in its two capitals — Moscow and St. Petersburg.
This time it was a bit different. The main difference between REC-2015 event that originally this race are also designed «for all», and that therefore the rules drawn up.
As the organizer of the competition, Igor Ermilin (Aspasia), «the time has come to develop this area of motorsport in Russia, it was important to bring to the grid of all those who, in principle, can participate in a car race.»
The rules of «Challenge» have been made to all classes of cars produced for the general start and has the basic characteristics of a sports car: roll cage, fire suppression system, racing buckets and belts. So, here you have the machines of the Amateur Championship and RHHCC Porsche Sport Challenge, as well as those that are involved in RSKG and even sports prototypes. A total of 15 crews start left. Of course, Endurance is quite a bit, but it is necessary to take into account the «first time» and the date — the end of October is a bit brave.
Of course, the curious structure of the grid. The first field prototype served Ligier JS53 Evo 2, the younger brother Ligier JS P2, which is now in the championship WEC serves Roman Rusinov. As part of its crew was a legendary athlete Michael Ukhov, who is now sporting director of the Moscow Raceway, and journalist Alex zhutiki. Together with them, the first line of the grid divided Subaru WRX STI (Alex Veremenko having a good experience VLN, and Vakhtang Dimitradze), then settled down Honda Civic Type R (Pavel Yashin, Vladimir udalenke Roman Golikov and Leo Tolkachev), Renault Clio Vladimir Cherevan and Andrew Artyushina, and then followed by another prototype, but the Russian production — Fenix, from the pen of the same Igor Ermilina. «Phoenix» ran two more stars of the Russian motor racing — Oleg Kvitka and Ilya Burenko known to participate in many European series.
Another big-name coach was part of the team UMMC on VAZ-2101 — Timur Timerzyanov Natalia Goltsova Andrei Maslennikov and Ilya Kashin as a result of qualification toured many of the more powerful cars. On VAZ classics were Michael Zasadych and Vladislav moved, but it turned out in their garage two cars — VAZ-2101 and VAZ-2105, because under the rules it was not forbidden to replace the car.
By the way, this move was undertaken to supply the participants time attakovskogo competition RHHCC, where all the cars are prepared for playing fast lap, but not participate in endurance racing.
Another car races from Moscow Classic Grand Prix — «Moskvich-412» MADI, as recreated by Igor Ermilina. Again star crew — multiple champion of Russia in rally Alexander Potapov and Vasily Prutkovsky, who also has a good experience of participating in official competitions.
Also at the start there were two VW Polo class «National» (RSKG) Team B-Tuning, including Stepan Krumilovym and Ivan Kibalchich, another Polo Team «Zenit Motorsport», Mazda 3 and the Mazda 323 (driven by riding in including two pilots also have experience in VLN — Sergey Baldin and Arthur Goroyan), Renault Logan and another team on the «Logan», but two, with the substituted version.
In drawing up the regulation takes into account not only the possibility of the participation of an increasing number of athletes and cars, but also the possible inexperience of many. Each team was required to spend at least three pitstop (at least 5 minutes each), and the residence time at the wheel of the sportsman limited 45th minutes at a minimum and a maximum of two hours. Refuelling was carried out in a special place in the paddock, watching her as special marshals and fire brigade, if necessary, to make it in time to intervene.
Surprisingly, finished the vast majority of the crews: 11. Ligier returned to the pits after an hour of racing, fulfilled its promozadachi, a few cars went off for technical reasons.
Technical problems were not even on the rare «Challenge,» but most of the teams managed to solve them, and return the car to the track. More often than not withstand transmission were electrical problems, but long race and so good, that is the time to fix.
The first finished Fenix, having driven 111 laps at an average speed of 108.84 km / h with the best lap time of 1: 49.385. On one lap less than the Honda Civic has come a team Neva Motorsport (Pavel Yashin, Vladimir udalenke Roman Golikov Tolkachev and Leo), third in the absolute steel Stepan Krumilov and Ivan Kibalchich on the Volkswagen Polo Sedan Team B-Tuning.
Home made: a start. The result turned out to be optimistic. As Igor Ermilin «not appreciating for a long-term project, we would not have started it. Although some kind of fatal, catastrophic failure, of course, in the near future, would refuse to hold it. » Therefore, there is a reasonable hope that next year we are waiting for the continuation of Russian Endurance Challenge — a large number of participants, vehicles and possibly on different routes.
