Rally Lahdenpohja 2011

On January 28-29 the first round of the Open Russian Rally Championship "Rally Lahdenpohja-2011" took place in Lahdenpohja (Karelia Republic). Dmitry Tagirov and Anna Zavershinskaya won this rally.

Compared with the previous season list of participants in 2011 is not full of "driver-stars" - the multiple champions of Russia Andrey Zhigunov and Sergey Uspensky are not planning to perform in these rounds of the championship, the last year champion Patrik Flodin will compete in the P-WRC and twice winner of Rally Lahdenpohja Evgeny Novikov will compete in the WRC.

This year Dmitry Tagirov is also concentrated on P-WRC but the Uralian man takes an opportunity to train in competetive environment. And he was absolutely successful in his training - he won every special stage!

Dmitry Tagirov finished the first day with 37 second advantage, Stanislav Travnikov was behind. Thus Dmitry won more than one second per kilometre. The third place was unexpectedly taken by Yury Kochmar. The Ukranian came to Karelia in order to get used to snow and ice surface and he succeeded in his first trial.

However, everything changed on the second day. First Kochmar "fell down" from the third to thirty-fifth position overall - his Mitsubishi stuck in a snowdrift and it took long nine minutes to pull it out. Travnikov retired two stages after due to the turbocharger problems.

As a result Tagirov didn't have any real competitor - by that moment he had almost two minute advantage over Andrey Trukhin who took the second place. There was no real struggle in this situation and the competitors took no risk retaining their positions. As a result, Dmitry Tagirov was two minutes and a half ahead of Andrey Trukhin at the rally finish.

In other standings there was no plot either. In R1 group Dmitry Gorchakov won having three minute advantage over Mikhail Skripnikov. In R2 Sergey Gerashchenko celebrated the victory. The last year champion and the holder of the Russian Cup defeated all his competitors - his gap was more than five minutes. In 4WD standings R3 and N4 Andrey Trukhin and Dmitry Tagirov got the victory respectively - the first had more than minute advantage over Timophey Vorobjev , the second one - three minutes over Gennadiy Broslavsky.

Next round of the Russian Rally Championship would be on March 11-12 in Asbest (city of Sverdlovsky region).

Official results:
1. Dmitry Tagirov (N4, Mitsubishi Lancer Evo IX) 1.13.08,4
2. Andrey Trukhin (R3, Mitsubishi Lancer Evo VII) +2.27,1
3. Gennadiy Broslavsky (N4, Mitsubishi Lancer Evo IX) +2.47,6
4. Timophey Vorobjev (R3, Mitsubishi Lancer Evo VII) +3.39,5
5. Vadim Makarov (N4, Mitsubishi Lancer Evo IX) +4.27,5
6. Andrey Blinkov (N4, Mitsubishi Lancer Evo IX) +6.26,8
7. Vladimir Kilunin (N4, Subaru Impreza)+7.25,2
8. Ivan Mironov (N4, Mitsubishi Lancer Evo IX) +7.52,5
9. Sergey Gerashchenko (R2, Citroen C2) +9.12,5
10. Yury Arshansky (R3, Subaru Impreza) +10.25,1