REC: The final at Moscow Raceway was really exciting!

Exciting battles, dramatic events and twisted intrigues until the end of the four-hour marathon at the Moscow Raceway – Grand Prix SPORTS, the fifth and final stage of the Russian endurance racing series – kept the audience in suspense from start to finish, creating a spectacular end to the 2024 season.

Despite the cloudy autumn weather, the last stage of the REC was clear and the rain during the marathon passed the Moscow Autodrome. The expected “rainy” race of the season never took place for the first time; all five stages of the series were held on dry asphalt.

29 teams started the last marathon, i.e. approximately one hundred pilots. A total of 150 drivers and more than 60 crews took part in the 2024 series.

Particular attention was paid to the long-awaited debut of the Russian sports car Rossa LM GT, which took place precisely in the last race of the season. G-Drive Rossa Racing team leader No. 26 Roman Rusinov showed the best time during qualifying in the GT Pro class, but had to start from the pit lane due to suspension problems.

During the course of the race, the car stopped in the pits more than once for technical work – and yet Roman Rusinov and his partner Vadim Meshcheryakov managed to finish and gather valuable information for further refining the new car and preparing for the next season. .

Three teams on CN Pro class sports prototypes were set to battle for victory in the overall standings. In qualifying, Konstantin Tereshchenko became the fastest in the Ligier of TeamGaris 29 for the third time in a row. And if this team failed to take pole position in the two previous stages, then this time the race went well for Tereshchenko and his crew partners Konstantin Zakharevsky and Stanislav Sidoruk in an almost perfect way.

TeamGaris 29’s rivals already experienced problems in the early stages of the marathon. The Ligier with tail number 31 of the Aimol Racing team spun after contact in the first corner after the start, and later the crew of Alexey Khairov, Sergey Ievlev and Alexey Chernov lost a lot of time due to technical problems.

And the Black Thorn team, which won the overall classification twice in the stages of the current season, but returned to the Norma prototype in the final stages of the season (after a fire in the Ligier in the previous race) due to an engine failure , the fight stopped early after the first hour of the marathon.

As a result, TeamGaris 29 achieved a crushing victory in the overall racing classification and the CN Pro class – this is the first success for the team, which only started competing this season on the Ligier JS 53 prototype.

The success of the TeamGaris team was complemented by the “silver” of crew No. 34, consisting of Stanislav Aksenov and Eduard Islamov in the GT class.
The main contenders for victory in this category were the drivers racing the Mercedes-AMG GT4, as well as the KTM RT Russia team, which returned to the REC after a break.

It was crew No. 71 of the KTM retirement. the finish.

Also, mechanical problems prevented the Time4BMW team – Alexey Nesov, Maxim Kizilov and Denis Bulatov, riders of crew No. 66, from becoming bronze medalists in the class.

It seemed that after this nothing could stop the Yadro Motorsport team, with team No. 88, also racing Mercedes, on their way to victory. The decision to make the first of three mandatory pit stops at the very start of the race during the safety car phase allowed Sergei Borisov to gain a firm grip on the lead halfway through the marathon. His partner Rinat Salikhov confidently held on to first place until about an hour before the finish, the left rear wheel suddenly flew off the Mercedes.

After this drama, the Sportcar Racing Team climbed to the top in the GT class – the duo Vitaly Larionov and Ivan Shcherbakov in the Porsche Cayman GT4 RS (crew no. 5) did not miss the victory. According to preliminary calculations, the second success of the season in the largest class gave these pilots the final first place in the sum of all five stages.

In the GT Pro category, the Touring competitors again took the lead after problems with faster cars. The fate of victory in this class was therefore decided in the very last minutes of the four-hour marathon.

And the real hero of the race was Nikita Mazepin, who literally on the eve of the start was announced as a member of crew No. 55 of the Kamenskiy Racing team, driving an Audi RS3LMS.

This morning the ex-Formula 1 driver was in the Tula region, where he won a stage of the Russian Rally Raid Cup. Nikita managed to reach the race track before the last hour of the marathon. However, just before his shift, the Audi’s left rear tire punctured, but Vsevolod Prakhov managed to expertly control the car in a high-speed bend and reached the pits.

Mazepin got behind the wheel of a car unknown to him and was unable to avoid contact with another car almost immediately after leaving the pit lane. The Audi was not damaged, but Nikita was fined. After serving his penalty, Mazepin returned to the track in third place and quickly started putting in the best laps. In the closing laps he caught up with his rivals from Real Performance (crew no. 24) and DRTeam (crew no. 10) and quickly overtook them, taking an emotional victory for Kamenskiy Racing.

Anastasia BendikovaGeneral Organizer of the Russian Endurance Racing Series: “After the last race of the season we can say that historically all Russian pilots who participated in Formula 1 participated in the REC. Since 2022, names Daniil Kvyat, Vitaly Petrov, Sergey Sirotkin and Nikita Mazepin started in our series.

Russian drivers achieved their most significant successes in world circuit motorsport in the Endurance category. We had Roman Rusinov and Viktor Shaitar – winners and medalists of the World Endurance Championship, the European Le Mans Series and the famous 24 Hours of Le Mans marathon, Alexey Nesov, who won the 2024 Spa 24 Hours, and Konstantin Tereshchenko . whose credits include participation at Le Mans and many successes in other international and Russian competitions.”

The battle for victory was no less dramatic in the CN class, where the teams drove Russian Shortcut cars. During the race, the rafts of the teams LapTime Racing and RATATA Racing fought for 1st place – the duel between Roman Mavlanov and Alexander Galakhov in the first half of the marathon turned out to be especially wonderful.

In the last segment, Mavlanov was in the lead, but literally five minutes before the finish, the gear lever of his car broke! This resulted in victory for Efim Gantmakher and his team RATATA Racing.

In the GT Light category, several teams managed to take the lead during the four-hour marathon, including the new RS Motorsport team at the wheel of a Mini Cooper. But the victory was achieved in sensational fashion by the team that was one of the first to enter the pits to solve problems: X-Rays Motorsport. Maxim Elizarov, Vakhtang Dimitradze, Roman Manuilov and Anatoly Shipov, driving a Mitsubishi Evo IX, made up for lost time on the marathon debut and took the checkered flag ahead of their class rivals.

The 2024 season of the Russian Endurance Racing Series has concluded and the official results will be summarized soon. In 2025, the REC calendar will again consist of five stages and the season will start again on May 24 at the Moscow Raceway.

Results of the SPORTS Grand Prix, 5th stage of the REC

Moscow Cup

1st place – TeamGaris, No. 29 (Konstantin Zakharevsky, Stanislav Sidoruk, Konstantin Tereshchenko)

2nd place – Sportcar Racing Team, No. 5 (Ivan Shcherbakov, Vitaly Larionov)

3rd place – TeamGaris, No. 43 (Stanislav Aksenov, Eduard Islamov)

G.T

1st place – Sportcar Racing Team, No. 5 (Ivan Shcherbakov, Vitaly Larionov)

2nd place – TeamGaris No. 43 (Stanislav Aksenov, Eduard Islamov)

3rd place – TIME4BMW, No. 66 (Maxim Kizilov, Denis Bulatov, Alexey Nesov)

CN Pro

1st place – TeamGaris, No. 29 (Konstantin Zakharevsky, Stanislav Sidoruk, Konstantin Tereshchenko)

2nd place – AIMOL Racing, No. 31 (Alexey Khairov, Sergey Ievlev, Alexey Chernov)

3rd place – Black Thom, No. 111 (Georgy Efrosinin, Igor Mukhin)

GT Pro/GT Pro Touring

1st place – Kamenskiy Racing, No. 55 (Dmitry Gomelkov, Vsevolod Prakhov, Nikita Mazepin)

2nd place – DRTeam, No. 10 (Alexey Denisov, Evgeny Chikinev, Anastasia Mikhailus, Alexey Savin)

3rd place – Real performance, No. 24 (Ilya Larionov, Vladislav Perfilyev)

GT light

1st place – X-Rays Motorsport, No. 23 (Maxim Elizarov, Vakhtang Dimitradze, Roman Manuilov, Anatoly Shipov)

2nd place – Mazda Karting Academy, No. 53 (Valery Smirnov, Sergey Baldin, Alexey Gribanov)

3rd place – “Heritage Motorsport”, No. 12 (Anton Evtukh, Ilya Obzhigalov, Konstantin Kvashnin)

C.N

1st place – RATATA Racing, No. 46 (Efim Gantmakher, Alexander Galakhov, Roman Lebedev)

2nd place – LapTime Racing, No. 52 (Damir Saitov, Roman Mavlanov, Sergey Chukanov)

3rd place – HOGO – AZDRIVE, No. 38 (Kirill Zakharov, Anton Zakharov, Pavel Parshutin, Artyom Viktorov)

Absolute classification

1st place – TeamGaris 29 (Konstantin Zakharevsky, Stanislav Sidoruk, Konstantin Tereshchenko)