Sports Equator on the Track near St. Petersburg: Racing Weekends and Formula 1 Drivers’ Race
In August, all drivers and teams of the country’s top racing tournament will take part in competitions at the Igora Drive circuit. The intrigue in the top class remains: experienced favorites cannot catch up with the newcomer leading the Russian championship. In marathon races, the battle between Russian race cars and Mercedes-AMG and Lamborghini supercars will continue. Racing interactives: in the paddock, every spectator can take tests to assess their readiness to participate in races.
The season of the Russian Circuit Racing Series, the largest and most prestigious racing tournament in the country, has reached its midpoint. And the middle of the season will be marked by a true motorsport festival at the country’s best racing track, the Igora Drive circuit near St. Petersburg. Where two consecutive race weekends will take place: August 8-9 and August 15-16.
Over four days on the track, you will be able to see cars from all classes participating in the series (over 150 cars in total). And watch races in both formats – both sprint races lasting up to an hour (SMP RSKG Sprint series) and multi-hour marathons (SMP RSKG Endurance series stage). The packed sports program of the weekend will be complemented by an equally packed entertainment program. Which traditionally makes SMP RSKG races attractive not only to motorsport fans but also to anyone looking for a way to spend summer weekends without boredom.
On August 8 and 9, sprint races will be held on the track in 5 classes – including the top category SMP TCR Russia with the participation of the fastest drivers and strongest teams, and the supercar class SMP TCR Russia. Moreover, in both mentioned categories, the leaders are not at all those who were considered favorites before the start of the season.
In the SMP TCR Russia class, Maxim Soldatov (TAIF Motorsport team), who is competing in his first full season in the top category of the Russian circuit, has been at the top of the standings for the entire first half of the season. Fans expected that in June or July, more experienced rivals would take the lead from the young Muscovite, but time and again Maxim was among the most productive drivers of the next stage. He now has three race wins to his name – while none of his rivals have managed to win more than once. And if any of these rivals seriously wants to fight Soldatov for the Russian champion title, they need to turn the situation around precisely at the stage near St. Petersburg: after all, another successful weekend could well give the leader the opportunity to play a score-management game in the remaining stages.
A similar situation is developing in the supercar category. Although the participants of the Russian Cup include very successful athletes (for example, Mikhail Aleshin, who tested Formula 1 cars and performed successfully in the prestigious American IndyCar series), the overall standings are confidently led by amateur driver from Samara, Vadim Meshcheryakov, competing in a Mercedes-AMG for the RSCar Motorsport team.
The main event of the second weekend (August 15-16) will be the scheduled 6-hour race on Saturday, the second stage of the marathon series SMP RSKG Endurance. It features the fastest cars competing in Russian circuit racing. Moreover, these are very different cars: the BR03 sport prototypes, designed by domestic engineers specifically for racing, compete with modified foreign supercars Mercedes-AMG GT3 and Lamborghini Huracan. In the first race of the season, a 12-hour marathon at the Moscow Raceway track, crews on BR03 finished in the top two positions – and rivals in foreign cars are surely counting on taking revenge.
Doing this will not be easy, because the best drivers in the country also compete on the BR03. In particular, the most successful crew includes two Russian Formula 1 drivers, Vitaly Petrov and Sergey Sirotkin. However, there are also star drivers among the rivals: for example, the aforementioned Mikhail Aleshin competes for the Capital RT team.
However, watching the races at the SMP RSKG stages is just the beginning of a big journey into the world of racing. As during other race weekends, spectators can visit places where the racing atmosphere is felt best. For example, take a walk along the start-finish straight during preparations for the start of a race or visit the team garages on a tour. At the stage on August 8-9, a pit lane walk will be held every day: during this time, teams roll cars out of the garages, and drivers are at the complete disposal of fans for 40 minutes for conversations, photos, and autographs. And advanced racing simulators from the simracing project SMP Esports will help fans feel like drivers, racing a virtual car around a digital copy of the Igora Drive track.
You can follow the races in Nizhny Novgorod live on the SMP RSKG public page on the VKontakte social network and on the SMP RSKG channel on the Rutube video service. Some races will also be broadcast live on the channels of the Match TV holding.
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