TCR World and life

12 RUSSIA Three wins out of the eight races held so far, meant that Kirill Ladygin has built a solid lead in the standings of the TCR Russia championship. The LADA Sport Rosneft’s driver is followed by his own teammate Mikhail Mityaev and the reigning champion Dmitry Bragin who are equal, 32 points behind. Bragin, who aims to claiin a fifth consecutive title, has still to win a race in the current season, but in spite of this he remains at striking distance. The most disappointed competitor so far is Klim Gavrilov. After a technical issue sidelined him in the season opener at Smolensk, the VRC-Team driver was stripped twice of race victories, at Igora Drive and Moscow Raceway. Gavrilov was given penalties, for a total of 8 seconds, but those cost 20 points that would have placed him second in the standings, 21 points behind the leader. IGORA DRIVE – LUKASHEVICH INHERITED VICTORY IN RACE 2 In Race 1, Ladygin made good use of TWO PENALTIES COST GAVRILOV 20 POINTS IN THE STANDINGS his pole and drove to a lights-to-flag victory. Bragin finished a close second after defending the position from a charging Aleksey Dudukalo who made a great start from 12th on the grid and then overtook Pavel Kalmanovich and Ivan Lukashevich to move into P3. The second race saw Kalmanovich leading before serving a drive-through for jump-start. Gavrilov moved into the lead after passing Andrej Radoshnov and Rustam Fatkhutdinov, while a close fight between Ladygin, Mityaev, Dudukalo and Andrej Maslennikov resulted in an incident that sidelined both Maslennikov and Mityaev; soon afterwards Ladygin retired with a broken suspension. Gavrilov took the chequered flag ahead of Lukashevich who had passed both Radoshnov and Fatkhutdinov, however the winner was given a five-second penalty for colliding with Fatkhutdinov and dropped to third behind Lukashevich and Radoshnov. Kirill Ladyginhas builtasolidlead