Alyoshin: Our crew lost because of the wrong strategy

In the second phase of the Russian Endurance Challenge season, which took place at the Igora Drive circuit, Mikhail Aleshin took part in the same crew with Vitaly Petrov who piloted the BR03 prototype. Their crew finished second in their class and third overall. After a four-hour marathon, Mikhail summarized the results for F1News.ru.

Mikhail Alyoshin: “Great race – I would like to thank the organizers of the wonderful championship, which will be held in this format for the first time this year. It’s great that there’s an opportunity to do a four-hour race. For us this is doubly cool as we continue to test the latest BR03 car, which will be produced in large numbers for monoseries performances in the Russian Championship. Such long races provide a full test of the car.

We had the second long race, both cars reached the finish and were fighting. Our crew only lost because of the wrong strategy. I want to thank the SMP Racing team, the BR Engineering company that builds these cars, all the guys in the offices and in the factory. They are doing a great job for our motorsport, for our country.

We’ve never produced anything that comes close in speed, but now our car can compete in speed with GT3 class vehicles that cost five times more. Our car is developed by Russian engineers, Russian pilots run on it.

As a pilot, I think objectively we deserved first place – in terms of pace and everything else. As director of the BR Engineering project I am very happy because I think we have an excellent machine.

The car will have no more global improvements. Our job was to create the fastest class in the Russian championship, and we did it by a large margin – the car is about six to eight seconds faster than the touring. Now we run in, looking for problems that we will solve. In general, the car turned out to be very successful.