REC: G-Drive Racing wins the final round of the season

Last Sunday, October 23, Sochi Autodrom hosted the fourth and final leg of the Russian Endurance Challenge-2022 series.

The 4-hour marathon was run in an exciting and dramatic battle and ended with the G-Drive Racing team’s general classification victory.

A total of nineteen crews took part in the race (which is less than in the previous stages) in five classes: CN Pro, CN, GT Pro, GT, GT light. However, it was the most spectacular race of the season. Even at the fourth hour of the race, it was hard to predict how it would end.

The main intrigue in the battle for victory in the general classification was related to the confrontation between the sporty prototype of the G-Drive Racing team (CN Pro class) and the Mercedes AMG GT3 of the Yadro Motorsport team (GT Pro -class).

According to the results of qualifying, these cars occupied the front row of the grid. Pole position was won by the duet of Roman Rusinov and Sergey Afanasyev in the G-Drive G01 (crew no. 26). However, already in the first meters of the distance, Sergey Stolyarov took the lead in a Mercedes (crew No. 48) – this car has an indisputable advantage on the straights due to the high engine power, but is inferior in the high-speed corners of Sochi Autodrom, where the aerodynamics of a lighter sports prototype were well reflected.

So, in the first half hour of the marathon, all attention was focused on the fight between Stolyarov and Rusinov. G-Drive Racing decided to beat their rivals due to an earlier pit stop.

Having previously made the first of three mandatory pit stops, Rusinov took advantage of the lack of traffic on the track and picked up the pace. Stolyarov, on the other hand, began to overtake the circular and lose time overtaking slower cars. The idea of ​​the G-Drive Racing team worked – after the pit stop, Mercedes No. 48 returned to the track already behind the G-Drive car.

Rusinov managed to strengthen his lead over the course of his second consecutive segment, but shortly before the middle of the distance these efforts were negated by the appearance of the safety car. This happened as a result of a fire that started on Mazda 3 (crew No. 53), when Valery Smirnov was driving.

The battle didn’t end there, as both favorites of the general classification soon ran into problems – at Mercedes due to interruptions in generator operation, and at G-Drive Racing due to a miscalculation during the second mandatory pit stop: the team left the car on the track before the four minute limit set by the regulations has expired.

For this violation, Sergei Afanasiev, who replaced Rusinov at the wheel, received a penalty passage through the pit lane. A similar fine, but for overtaking under yellow flags, was also imposed on the crew of the Yadro Motorsport team. In the future, persistent technical problems in the car of Sergei Stolyarov and his partner Viktor Shaitar prevented this team from claiming first place in the general classification.

And just before the final corner of the final lap, Yadro Motorsport’s GT Pro class victory was also in jeopardy – the car froze on the track, but the driver still managed to continue. As a result, Mercedes No. 48 was able to cross the finish line, and the crew secured first place in their category.

Rusinov and Afanasiev confidently held the first position in absolute terms until the end. Their team took first place in the CN Pro class for the second time in a row and the G-Drive Racing team took their second win this REC season. Recall that Rusinov together with Daniil Kvyat won the second stage of the championship on the Igora Drive circuit.

In addition, G-Drive Racing also recorded a standings win of the Krasnodar Territory Championship, which was held as part of the REC-2022 final in Sochi. In CN Pro, representatives of two crews of the Art Line team, competing in Legends-Evo cars, climbed the podium along with Rusinov and Afanasyev.

Crew #23 from the Spora GT team with Porsche (Alexey Dudukalo, Evgeny Rumyantsev, Anton Devyakovich) and crew #71 from the KTM Racing Team Russia team (Andrey Goncharov, Alexander Maslennikov) joined the top three in GT Pro. And on the KTM X-Bow, literally half an hour before the finish, the engine caught fire, which didn’t stop the team from taking third in class. In the GT class, the first part of the race was marked by an intense battle between the Spora GT drivers (crew no. 41) in the Toyota Supra and APRTeam in the BMW M4 GT4 (crew no. 98).

At some point, the BMW crew (Marat Khairov and Oleg Semyonov) managed to seize the initiative and build a fairly solid foundation. But just over an hour before the finish, both teams had technical difficulties – the Spora GT team managed to overcome them faster, which predetermined the outcome of the race in Toyota’s favor (Alexander Vartanyan, Stanislav Aksenov, Sergey titarenko). Third place in class was won by the Shonx GT4 team (crew No. 28).

In GT Light, the race started with a great rivalry between foreign cars and the VAZ 21053 of the RK-Sport team, including Arkady Tsaregradtsev, champion of the Russian drift championship, in Sochi. The “combat classic” was in no way inferior to its rivals on the Mazda 3 and BMW E92. However, due to a number of circumstances, the pilots on the Zhiguli were still unable to stay ahead.

The victory in this class was celebrated by Ilya Obzhigalov and Aslan Shirinov of Mazda Karting Academy (crew No. 77). The second place was taken by crew No. 92 of the ClassicCarRacing team and RK-Sport took the bronze.

In the numerous CN class, Shortcut consisted of Mitjet 2L teams. And the crew of one of these cars won a confident victory: Sergey Borisov and Nadezhda Yakhnich (crew No. 81, Yakhnich Drive) confidently spent the whole race and rightfully climbed to the top of the podium. The top three winners were completed by the Balchug Racing Team (crew no. 21, Mikhail Loboda and Kirill Kirakozov) and Zub&Ko (crew no. 9, Vitaly Zubenko and Konstantin Zakharevsky).

Separately, it is worth noting the carriages in which the girls rode. The most successful achievement was Nadezhda Yakhnich, who first participated in REC and, as already noted, won in a pair with Borisov in the CN class.

The Races and Tochka team, made up of Vadim Vereshchagin and Tatyana Dobrynina, again performed in the same test group – they finished fifth. Arina Sukhanova was on Mazda Karting Academy crew #53 with Valery Smirnov. After a dramatic fire from a broken gas tank, it seemed that Arina was no longer destined to run this marathon, but the team’s mechanics took their heroic action and restored the car. Fifteen minutes before the finish, Sukhanova returned to the track and still saw the checkered flag!

Igor Ermilin, Head of the REC Organizing Committee: “The 2022 season is over. More than one hundred and ten pilots and forty-seven crews took part in the competition. Many teams took part in long races for the first time and would have enjoyed it very much.

Next season we are certainly looking forward to an increase in the number of participants, especially regular ones, who will perform in all phases of the series. Live broadcasts of the stages were watched online by more than two million motorsport fans and Sochi Autodrom was pleased to see a large number of active spectators in the stands. We think it has been a very positive and successful season!”

In November, the final results of the REC-2022 season in team and individual competitions will be listed. In 2023, the start of the Russian Endurance Series (REC) season is scheduled for mid-May. The race will be held in five stages with starts at Moscow Raceway, Igora Drive and Sochi Autodrom.