On August 9–10, 2014, the Russian Unlim 500+ Festival of Supercars had its first guest performance in Minsk, the capital of Belarus. Another first-ever experience was adoption of Olympic single-elimination system as the final part of the tournament.
The event was organised by Dragtimes team together with the Belarusian promoter Racing.by and was held on the territory of Minsk-1 airport. More than 5,000 spectators attended the festival and really enjoyed the event even in spite of hot weather.
As usually, it was a two-day event and the practice sessions held on Saturday were traditionally interrupted by a heavy rain shower. Due to poor weather conditions, the organisers had to reschedule practice sessions for Sunday, which caused some changes to the program.
Almost the entire Sunday was devoted to practice and qualifying sessions with no less than 37 sportsmen involved. Apart from regular participants, quite a lot of “rookies”, both from Russia and Belarus, entered the competition. This list included Roman Nagervadze, who has been participating in the Russian professional drag racing tournaments starting from the beginning of the 2000s and has claimed several victories in Russia’s official championships and series; and Inessa Tushkanova, a model and a driver in motorsports, who is particularly successful in rally racing series.
Apart from Inessa, there was one more female driver participating in Unlim 500+ Festvial this time — Ludmila Amani from New York behind the wheel of the McLaren 12C. Ludmila is a big motorsports enthusiast; she has scored victories in several nonprofessional touring car series.
Unfortunately, neither of them was able to compete with male drivers and could not qualify for Top-16, as only 16 best participants out of 37 sportsmen were able to take part in final runs.
As it is usually the case, Nissan GT-R R35 was the most popular vehicle at Unlim 500+. According to the owners and participants, this car proves itself to be very tuning-friendly and has the most reasonable price on spare parts. Ten Nissan GT-R R35 cars took part in the festival held in Minsk. Another popular car brand was Audi, featuring RS6, TTRS and other models.
There were quite a few other car brands apart from Nissan and Audi. The list of participants included Saleen, Lamborghini (featuring the all-new Huracán), Porsche, BMW, Mercedes, Infinity, McLaren, Chevrolet Camaro and Chevrolet Corvettet, Nissan Juke GT-R Shpilli-Villi, which has caught the fancy of the audience, and two Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT8 SUVs. A lot of truly fascinating cars!
The toughest and most cold-blooded drivers qualified for the quarterfinals:
111 Pavel Khodykin Nissan GTR 35 Mk.4 Thor
61 Tigran Arushanov Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT-8 (WK) Mk. 3.7. OL Custom Twin
50 Gosha Perzhelia Nissan GT-R GoshaTurboTech ZEUS
65 Dmitry Samorukov Nissan GT-R (R35) Mk.2 AMS Alpha16
55 Leonid Vilde Lamborghini Gallardo Nera 2000HP
19 Oleg Belousov Nissan GT-R (R35) Mk.1 Switzer Goliath
12 Andrey Grinevich Audi TT RS Revo Technik
777 Evgeny Kern Nissan GT-R (R35) Mk.2 Turbo Drive SV 1800
Noteworthy is the fact that Evgeny Kern was driving the Nissan GT-R no. 777, which is owned by the renowned Yury Milayev, a multiple Unlim 500+ winner. Yuri was not able to participate this time; however, he entrusted the car to Evgeny, who is actually the owner of the Turbo Drive tuning studio and is very familiar with this car.
The quarterfinals were dashed with an engine failure, which happened to Nissan GT-R of Dmitry Samorukov. Dmitry secured victory in the run; however, he was not able to continue the tournament. That is why his semifinal competitor Tigran Arushanov, who was driving the Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT8 (no. 61), moved on straight into the finals, where he met with Pavel Khodykin behind the wheel of the Nissan GT-R (no. 111). An interesting fact is that Pavel has nicknamed his car “Thor”. Pavel’s competitor in the semifinals was Gosha Perzhelia driving a snow-white Nissan GT-R (no. 50) under the moniker of “Zeus”. Unfortunately, Zeus was defeated by Thor and Gosha climbed the third place on the podium.
The most amazing fact was the second place scored by the Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT8 in the hands of Tigran Arushanov. This car keeps surprising the audience and has won many hearts of speed enthusiasts. However, never before has Tigran been able to climb the podium and this time he has finally scored second place in the competitions! This amazing result is more than decent taking into account the fact that the owner of this car has been working hard to achieve it by upgrading his car year after year.
And the final results are:
1st place: Pavel Khodykin — Nissan GTR 35 Mk.4 Thor
2nd place: Tigran Arushanov — Jeep Grand Cherokee SRT-8 (WK) Mk. 3.7. OL Custom Twin
3rd place: Gosha Perzhelia — Nissan GT-R GoshaTurboTech ZEUS
Best time result at the Unlim 500+ Belarus velcom Racing Festival was demonstrated by Pavel Khodykin — 15.9 seconds.
Starting from this year, track distance was reduced to 1 km (instead of 1 mile) and that was done for safety reasons, as some of the cars were able to accelerate up to 400 km/h closer to the end of a 1-mile distance.
Nevertheless, top speed reached by Nikolai Gornakov behind the wheel of his Saleen was just cosmic — 375 km/h in the end of a 1-km dragstrip — an unbelievable result! As a reminder, 1-mile speed record was set by Leonid Vilde driving the Lamborghini Gallardo — it was 409 km/h.
Top Speed Winners at Unlim 500+ Belarus velcom Racing Festival:
1. Nikolai Gornakov, Saleen, no. 999 — top speed of 375 km/h
2. Evgeny Kern, Nissan GT-R (R35), no. 777 — 343 km/h
3. Sergey Savinov, Nissan GT-R (R35), no. 100 — 342 km/h
Dmitry Samorukov, chief executive of SMP Racing, a programme aimed to support and develop Russian motor sports, gave the following comment after Unlim 500+ Belarus velcom Racing Festival: “It was an excellent event organised by two great teams and supported by incredible, friendly, welcoming and involved Belarusian spectators! I would really like this event to become a tradition in Belarus. Fourth round of the Russian Drag Racing Championship will be held in Grodno next weekend. It will feature same teams of organisers — Dragtimes and Racing.by. I think that right after it we should start choosing the place and time for the next event in the nearest future”.
