For the first time since 2015, since the establishment of the Russian Endurance Racing Series (REC), 34 teams will participate simultaneously at the start of the season finale!
The 4th stage of the REC will take place on September 23 at the Moscow Raceway near Moscow. Previously, the maximum number of participants was no more than 27 cars – which is exactly the number present in the third stage of the series at the Igora Drive circuit this year. In total, more than 50 crews and 110 pilots from various Russian cities, as well as foreign drivers, have been announced for the season.
The peloton will be a few rows longer and entering the first corner will be exciting. This will require maximum concentration from the pilots, as endurance racing is not a sprint; it is not so much the positional battle that is important here, but the safety of the equipment and the number of laps completed during the four hours of the marathon allocated to it. by regulations.
It is interesting that at this stage two sports prototypes will participate in the race. The crew of the Blackthorn team on the Ligier JS 53 Evo (Egor Efrosinin and Igor Mukhin) will compete with the G-Drive Racing crew of Roman Rusinov. The second pilot of crew No. 26 was announced the day before: again Vadim Meshcheryakov, an experienced racer from Tolyatti who made his REC debut this year.
The third competitor in the CN Pro class is crew No. 99 (Nikita Frolov and Semyon Kharchenko) of Team Garis, racing on Mitjet 2l.
In the CN class, three crews have been announced for the final stage at Shortcut – two are already known from previous stages, these are crews No. 44 (Racing and Point) and No. 43 (Alex Racing Team), as well as a new crew of the ZORRO SOTKA RACING team in car No. 100.
In the coming phase, a separate competition will be organized within the GT Pro class, specifically for teams driving Seat cars. A total of four charged Seat Leons have been announced for the 4th stage. Among them is team No. 10 DRteam (Evgeny Chikinev and Alexey Denisov), who competed in the previous three stages in the GT class in a Mercedes-Benz car.
Also in the new competition will be present the “king” of Russian drift – Arkady Tsaregradtsev (crew No. 8, “GRACE AUTO”). The rest of the GT Pro class cars are Marussia GT, Lamborghini Gallardo, Mercedes Amg GT3 and Chevrolet Corvette.
New additions are also expected in the GT Light class. In addition to the already announced newcomers in the Mercedes E190 (crew no. 30, ClassicCar Racing), a new crew from the Arena Karting team (crew no. 93) has registered to participate in the race. Let us remind you that the class leader is still crew No. 36 of the Obagra team, racing a BMW M3 3E36. A total of 6 teams are registered for the class.
The most populous class remains GT. It is said that there are fourteen crew members driving cars from five different makes.
When asked which technique is more effective and what else should be paid more attention, Igor Ermilin, a famous racing designer and head of the REC organizing committee, replied:
“Specific power. This indicator as a comparative characteristic of REC cars is very important, although in motorsport, of course, there are still many factors that influence the result.
Special situation with power density in CN classes. Their specific power is comparable to that of the best cars of the GT class – 330-360 hp/t, and it turns out that this is one of the most energy-efficient cars on the track. But their lap speed is very design dependent, and while the Shortcut is 13 seconds behind the GT at Moscow Raceway, the G-Drive G01 prototype is 7 seconds ahead – and with the same power-to-weight ratio.
The most powerfully equipped car in the REC is the Lamborghini Gallardo GT3 LP560-FL2; with 477 hp/t it loses on the track to the sports prototype G-Drive G01 with a specific power of 354 hp/t, although only by less than a second – with a total output of 560 hp. against only 255 hp.”
This year, three of the four stages of the four-hour marathon will take place at the Moscow Raceway circuit near Moscow. The race starts at 3 p.m. Ends at 7:00 PM. Spectator access to the circuit is available from 12:30 Moscow time. For those who cannot come to the circuit, a live broadcast will be organized as always on the TK Start channels and in the ROSGONKI group on VK.
Source: F1 News
I am Christopher Clyde, an experienced journalist and content writer with a passion for sports. I have been writing about Formula 1 news for the past five years and am currently employed as an author at athletistic.com, one of the top sports websites in the US.
