About the first day of the rally Uralasbest 2020
Two special stages and lots of emotions are behind; let’s give the floor to the guys:
Dmitry Myachin, driver, «We started the first special stage very well; literally during a few kilometers we felt confidence in the car. Indeed, I got incredible pleasure from the track, from the way the car is driven – from everything! Somewhere a few kilometers before the finish line, the car… stalled completely. We tried to understand what was going on. From the instruments, we realized that the throttle valve didn’t react to anything and quick adaptation didn’t help; after that we removed the pipe and saw that the damper was simply jammed, perhaps this was some kind of defect. The metal expanded from heating, and the throttle was jammed so much that we couldn’t even move it with our hands; we were only able to knock the valve off with a screwdriver – it returned the unit to a working state, so we’ve finished. We went to the second special stage, trying not to be very aggressive and without emotions, just drive carefully and work. During the second pass I was driving so that I thought I was losing my pace, but in terms of time it turned out to be quite the opposite – telemetry showed that the pace was excellent! During the service it turned out that the component was indeed defective and was replaced with a new one».
Alexey Lukyanuk, co-driver, «Well, the car is cool! It drives really fast! We worked well at the tests, today we’ve made the notes good – we did such a high-quality job. Dmitry took a very good pace from the first special stage! It is clear that he lacks 4WD experience, but at the same time the car allows him to rush cheerfully; I even got high on the right! Unfortunately, we had some technical difficulties – the throttle valve was defective. During the second pass, we improved and reached the finish line. The car jumps perfectly well, that is, we “flew” there almost at full throttle on the Avianosets springboard – the liftoff was at a speed of around 155 km/h! It behaves very well in twisted corners, perfectly holds the bend; the balance is very pleasant, it allows you to enjoy very vigorously and dynamically.
And I’m a good guy, reading the “reversed” notes! That is, all drivers often have the direction of the corner first, then the graduation number (right five, for example); and Myachin, on the contrary, has the number first, and then the direction (two left, 50, six right, and so on). At first the brain refused to perceive it, I wrote and read wrong. But now it’s working, and this is a very interesting training for the brain, I think. It looks like learning a new language; it turns out that all the time you need to tune yourself in order to be in focus, concentrated, not to relax and read carefully. An interesting kind of challenge for me, we’re not bored!»
Tomorrow is a full racing day – 137.24 km of total distance – and there will be new emotions!
Well, let’s show our cards completely! The car from the TBRacing team, which is the official partner of 
Alexey Lukyanuk, second driver, “The car looks technically like an R5, you look at all the components – suspension elements, etc. – everything is very high quality: fit of parts, workmanship and interior, and all elements under the hood are at an excellent level. It’s a sports car with all the necessary components – a short steering rack, competitive brakes, and long travel suspension. But it’s a little bit weaker in terms of motor power and not as, so to speak, ideal as the R5. But it makes a good impression, responds well to settings and is very fun to drive, and the acceleration dynamics to 160 km/h is not inferior to R5 class cars».
Dmitry Myachin, «“It’s clear that Alexey can win the race with anything, even with a VAZ, but from the team leader point of view – Lukyanuk needs to demonstrate this car potential, not just drive for pleasure. And I have to show this car capabilities for ordinary rally drivers”.
Sergei Remennik, driver, “It was a great rally! I’m happy that Marina was able to join me and we drove this rally together. It turns out to be a little bit more than a year without constant training – there were only occasional trips to competitions, so the lack of constant practice has its affect. Alas, we can’t keep such a high pace as the guys set, but we can drive safely and bring the car to the finish line without breakdowns. There are no secrets to add the pace, we know how to achieve it. We just need to pay due attention to it and have more practice behind the wheel. Vasily Gryazin, Denis Rostilov and Igor Bulantsev set a high pace, it was a pleasure to driving with them. Our result is quite natural and even better than one would expect: to be the second in the race! Yes! We can do it”.
We would like to wish reliability to Alexey Lukyanuk, our coach and mastermind, and his co-driver Alexey Arnautov! You have already proven that you have speed, but to achieve goals you still need a reliable team and technical base – a good car. This is what you lacked during the 2019 season and what we wish you to find to continue your sports career.
To our rivals and friends in the fight for the ERC-2 classification awards, Juan Carlos Alonso and Juan Pablo Monasterolo, we want to say that you deserve this victory like no other! Although we drove very few kilometers, struggling with you, we followed your performances during the season and sincerely wished you success. / And not some brisk Italians who don’t even have all-wheel drive :)))/
As for Mark and I, we still love motorsports, rallies and really miss the FIA European Rally Championship races atmosphere. While the priority is to study at the TRIUM Global Executive MBA, we can’t plan long weekly trips to participate in rally competitions in Europe or Latvia, but highly likely we can “drag” the races to our region! After all, winter has come in Russia, which means snow-ice sports will soon be available to all national racers.
Most likely, we will drive one or two rallies that will be held in our region as part of the Russian Cup, and we also have 10 wonderful Mazda MX5 Cup cars and ice on the lake. We will not stay without our “portion of sports adrenaline”! And if, reading these lines, you would like to join us in the championship on endurance – welcome 
My father and I participated in the VAZ-2103 car that is 11 years older than me, it was made in 1973. Despite its considerable age, the car is still young by the standards of a retro rally and falls into the Youngtimer scoring group.
It seems to me that the driver has absolutely nothing to do 🙂 – there are no speed tasks; you only have to maintain the schedule and the average speed and listen where to turn at additional competitions. That is, this story is only about the co-driver. And he is really busy – he solves the tasks from the organizers in the road book, tries to understand the schemes of the “shapes”, searches for tricky corners. The tasks were very difficult, to be honest, I only began to understand what was going on just by the end of the race. But when I figured it out – it was so cool!
By the rally results we took the eighth place in the Youngtimer category. The fact that dad and I drove the race is great! It was nice to be back at the time when I made my first steps in motorsports. As in the famous book by Alexandre Dumas – “twenty years after” in the same crew: father as a driver, and I’m with a road book. It was very nice to spend the whole day with my dad! I understand that I’m not very qualified as a co-driver but by the end of the race I was not bad 🙂
Mark got into this situation a bit earlier, I’m joining now. Except this, in September we begin training in the MBA program in London and now we have a lot of “homework” that also takes time. Work and training give us a full load, we also need time for our families, so we had to optimize our schedules with sacrifice in rally.
It’s sad that I won’t be able to go to this interesting gravel race in Poland and I won’t meet with my friends, comrades and rivals there. I wish you all sports luck and to reach the desired finish.
In contrast to the two island rounds, the number of registered participants in the ERC2 standings has increased – there are nine of them. Russians Sergei Remennik and Marina Danilova continue European performances in the usual production Mitsubishi Lancer. At the start the state of play among the participants in the Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X to those who chose Abarth 124 Rally was 6:3. Let us recall that now the RGT cars are also eligible for scoring points in the updated ERC2 category, and in addition participate in the Abarth Rally Cup.
Remennik’s plan for this rally weekend was simple: check the newly assembled car at the test session and tune in to high competition in order to score the maximum possible amount of points, because the beginning of the season was “not fruitful” for the crew. However, it wasn’t possible to tune in to the upcoming rally – in one of the test days the turbine in the Mitsubishi Lancer failed, and by some reason the similar unit was not included in the set of spare parts taken to the race by the team.
After the last three rounds there is an interesting situation in the intermediate ERC2 classification: the first two positions are occupied by Juan Carlos Alonso and Zelindo Melegari in N4 group cars, and the third place was taken by Andrea Nucita in the RGT-group vehicle.