The first stage of Russia Rally Raid Cup of the Year 2004 started at 14:00 hours near the settlement of Sosnovo 90 km from Saint Petersburg. 47 crews lined up at the starting line. The list of participants included such well-known and recognized in the motor sports world names as Sergei Girya, Ruslan Misikov, Sergei Shmakov and others.

For the first day the participants faced a 25 km-long Special Section.

 

 On Saturday, the crews had to do 3 laps of 100 km, and on Sunday 2 laps of 100 km. 60% of the track represented high-speed rally strips of rather wide forest roads.

For the Belarusian crew of Andrei Birukov and Dmitry Kniga it was the first acquaintance with such a competition discipline. The complexity of the track and technical problems prevented the crew of “YAROVIT – ROSAGROLEASING” team from occupying a place on the winners podium, thus the 6-th place in the category (T1) out of 9 competing crews is in itself a good achievement. All crews of “YAROVIT – ROSAGROLEASING” reached the finish line, and thus brought the team the honorable fourth place overall, having left behind the long-time veterans of Russia Cups, the teams “P-Jazz” and “Geo-Raid”.

The 2002 Champion of Russia Ruslan Misikov became winner of the “Norther Forest” Baja, defeating in the face-to-face encounter his main opponent Sergei Shmakov. The latter was thrown off the track in the heat of the race and could not reach the finish.

Unexpectedly, Andrei Novikov took second place in the absolute classification. Konstantine Zhiltsov followed in the third place.

Boris Gadasin won in the Production Category. Semion Smirnov of “Geo-Raid” took the second place.

For more detailed information, please look up the race official site at www.grandprixgames.ru/northern_forest.

Because of numerous protests against the competition leaders, the race results were declared as preliminary, and the Automobile Federation of Russia is going to review the package of appeals and, possibly, re-judge the cup stage results.

Materials from http://www.avtosport.ru/ and http://www.autotusa.ru/. were used in preparing this article