Second consecutive pole position for Klim Gavrilov
Carville Racing’s Klim Gavrilov claimed a second consecutive pole position in the TCR Russia. After topping the Moscow Raceway Qualifying three weeks ago, the young man from Saint Petersburg drove his Volkswagen Golf GTI to clock the fastest lap at Sochi Autodrom.
Gavrilov, who had already been the fastest in the morning Practice, completed his first flying lap in 2:20.111, a time that nobody was able to beat. In the first half of the twenty-minute session the rest of the field remained more than one second behind, then Mikhail Grachev and his LADA Vesta were clocked at 2:20.295, moving up to second with a gap of less than two tenths.
The final three minutes of Qualifying saw a number of improvements, but Gavrilov’s time was not to be beaten.
Grachev improved to 2:20.228 and secured the second position on the grid for tomorrow’s Race 1, while his LADA Sport Rosneft colleague Kirill Ladygin moved up to third (2:20.439), ahead of Ivan Lukeshevich’s Lukoil Racing Audi RS3 LMS (2:20.701) and Anton Badoev’s Rail Pro Team Cupra (2:20.877).
The point awarded for the pole position meant that Gavrilov moved up to fourth in the standings, on equal points with Ladygin. However, they are still 40 points behind TAIF Motorsport’s Dmitri Bragin who ranked only tenth in today’s Qualifying, 1.6 seconds off the pole. Bragin’s Audi is still suffering from being the heaviest car in the field, at 1410 kg because of the combination between Compensation Weight and Success Ballast.
Lukashevich and his teammate Aleksey Dudukalo – 6th in Qualifying – are currently second and third in the standings with gaps of 36 and 39 points.
The first race will start tomorrow at 11:45 local time (10:45 CET); live streaming at www.tcr-series.tv.
