Ladygin wins Race 2 and retakes the points lead
Kirill Ladygin claimed a lights-to-flag victory in TCR Russia’s second race at Kazan Ring; it was his second win of the season and enabled him to retake the leadership in the standings, ten points clear of Aleksey Dudukalo.
Race 1 winner Klim Gavrilov carved his way through the field from P7 on the grid to second under the chequered flag and climbed to fourth in the standings, only two points behind Ladygin’s teammate Mikhail Mityaev. Grigory Burlutskyi encored the third place scored in the morning’s race.
At the start, Ladygin took the lead from the pole on the reversed grid, while Ilya Yekushevsky stalled from the second spot, which helped Andrej Maslennikov to move into P2. Behind him there was a tough fight between Mityaev, Burlutskyi, Gavrilov and Rustam Fatkuhtdinov that resulted in a number of clashes, eventually Fatkuhtdinov and Mityaev took P3 and P4 ahead of Gavrilov and Burlutskyi.
The following laps saw Gavrilov and Burlutskyi moving into P3 and P4 respectively, while Dmitry Bragin was fighting with Ivan Lukashevich and Dudukalo for P6. On lap 6, Dudukalo’s car slowed and the championship leader was forced to keep on at a crawling pace until the end, salvaging three points for the 13th place.
Another battle for P5 involved Fatkuhtdinov, Bragin, Mityaev, Lukashevich, Andrej Radoshnov and Pavel Kalmanovich; in lap 10, Fatkuhtdinov made a mistake and dropped from P5 to P10, and soon afterwards retired into the pits with a technical issue.
Gavrilov was putting the pressure on Maslennikov who made a mistake at the end of lap 12 and dropped to third, and on the following lap he lost another position to Burlutskyi.
Two laps later, there was contact between Lukashevich and Radoshnov, they both lost several places, while Bragin and Kalmanovich advanced to P5 and P6 respectively.
Gavrilov closed in on Ladygin, but the latter retained a margin of a bit more than one second under the chequered flag.
The next event of TCR Russia will be at Moscow Raceway on August 22/23.
Race 2
1. Kirill Ladygin (LADA Sport Rosneft, LADA Vesta Sport), 18 laps
2. Klim Gavrilov (VRC-Team, Hyundai i30 N), 1.280
3. Grigory Burlutskyi (Carville Racing, Hyundai i30 N), 6.669
4. Andrej Maslennikov (LUKOIL Racing Team, Hyundai i30 N), 11.678
5. Dmitry Bragin (TAIF Motorsport, Hyundai i30 N), 12.358
Championship points
1. Kirill Ladygin 96 pts.; 2. Aleksey Dudukalo 86; 2. Mikhail Mityaev 73
Picture: Grigory Golyshev
