Five stages — five winners: Damir Idiyatulin became the strongest in the RDS GP in Krasnoyarsk

• Krasnoyarsk resident Damir Idiyatulin won his first victory in RDS GP 2023
• The final turned into an intra-team derby «SINTEC • Fresh Marketplace»
• Five past stages of the Grand Prix of the Russian Drift Series were won by five different drivers< /li>

KRASNOYARSK, August 14, 2023

The fifth stage of the Russian Drift Series 2023 Grand Prix (RDS GP) has ended in Krasnoyarsk on the Red Ring track. The autodrome became the site of one of the most dramatic weekends in the history of the series and the most eventful for the SINTEC • Fresh Marketplace team, which left its rivals no chance of success for the second round in a row.

Having entered the TOP 16 with the full squad, at this stage, SINTEC • Fresh Marketplace had to lose one of its pilots. The grid of races brought together Evgeny Losev and Denis Migal, and Losev was the strongest in this battle. Eugene went to the TOP 8, where he met with Denis Sorokopud. In this duel, the young pilot of LUKOIL Racing Drift Team made a mistake that led to a collision with an opponent. Due to serious injuries, which could not be repaired in the 5 minutes allotted by the regulations, Sorokopud issued a technical exit, and Losev went to the semi-finals through a single passage «bye run». At the TOP 4 stage, contact was again not without, but it was already arranged by the leader of STAR PЁR STARS AIMOL Charles NG. As a result, the pilot from Hong Kong went to fight for third place, and Losev became a participant in the decisive duel of the stage, where his teammate from Krasnoyarsk Damir Idiyatulin was already waiting for him.

Idiyatulin's path to the final was also not easy. In the TOP 16, he was rammed by Stepan Azarov (AUTOPROFI TEAM), in the TOP 8, Damir defeated Grigory Gusev (LUKOIL Racing Drift Team), and in the semi-finals, held on a wet track from the rain, he defeated Anton Kozlov (Carville Racing). The intra-team derby «SINTEC • Fresh Marketplace» in the final was a real highlight of the weekend — the most experienced pilots arranged incredibly dense and synchronized rides, delighting the Krasny Koltso stands packed to capacity and thousands of fans at the RDS TV broadcast screens. As a result of this bright duel, the judges unanimously named Damir Idiyatulin the winner, for whom this «gold» was the first at the RDS GP 2023 stage.

But the real heroes of the weekend in Siberia were the mechanics of the SINTEC • Fresh Marketplace team. On Thursday, Evgeny Losev seriously crashed his Toyota Supra A80 in training, and the team had to urgently restore it. Then the engine failed on Damir Idiyatulina's Toyota Supra. Only the mechanics returned Damir's car to service, as on Saturday they had to change the power unit already on Losev's long-suffering car. And on Sunday, during the morning warm-up, Evgeny's car caught fire! But this did not break the team. Losev's car was restored to the TOP 16 and released to the start, albeit without a burnt rear wing. Therefore, the meeting of two long-suffering Toyota Supra in the final was a reward for the whole team for its incredible work and will to win.

However, not only SINTEC • Fresh Marketplace cars were on fire at the stage. In the race with Damir Idiyatulin Anton Kozlov's BMW E30 (Carville Racing) caught fire. Having made contact with an opponent, Anton ran into his own front bumper, which quickly burst into flames under the hot bottom. The car was extinguished, but then he went on without part of the body kit.

However, those who were able to keep their car intact on Sunday could be counted on the fingers. Nikolay Gorkovenko (Carville Racing) knocked down Andrey Astapov (LUKOIL Racing Drift Team) in the TOP 16, and Leonid Schneider (TimeUp) actually destroyed his car in the race with Denis Sorokopud (LUKOIL Racing Drift Team). In the role of a pursuer, Leonid did not calculate the distance during acceleration and turned out to be too close to the leader, who at the moment of initiating the skid caught him with the stern of the car. As a result, Schneider crashed into the bump stop at full speed — the pilot himself was not injured, but his Toyota Mark2 JZX90 is waiting for serious repairs.

Ilya Popov from «FailCrew x DarkSide» miraculously did not take Grigory Gusev from LUKOIL Racing Drift Team off the track, and Georgy Chivchyan (TAKAYAMA FORWARD AUTO) could not avoid contact with the car of Anton Kozlov (Carville Racing). Fortunately, by the semi-finals, the pilots stopped destroying their cars and equipment of rivals — contacts, if any, were not fatal.

RDS GP. «Red Ring». Personal account. Top 3:

< b>RDS GP. «Red Ring». Team report. Top 3:

The stage in Krasnoyarsk continued the tradition of «a new stage — a new winner», giving us the fifth qualifying triumph of the season and the fifth winner of the pair races. Secondly, he changed the leader of the overall individual standings. Since Georgy Chivchyan couldn't even make it to the semi-finals, he lost the first line of the standings to Charles NG. Anton Kozlov remains third.

As for the battle of the teams, nothing threatens the TAKAYAMA FORWARD AUTO championship there yet, but STAR PЁR STARS AIMOL has come close almost — the difference is only 44 points. And the second consecutive stage won allowed «SINTEC • Fresh Marketplace» to get ahead of Carville Racing and enter the top three.

RDS GP. Personal account. Position after five stages. Top 3:

RDS GP. Team report. Position after five stages. Top 3:

The sixth stage of the Grand Prix of the Russian Drift Series will be held on September 2-3 in Moscow. RDS GP will return to the Moscow Raceway, where the 2023 season started, but this time the pilots will have to overcome the evaluated section in the opposite direction. As shown last year, not everyone is given the reverse configuration of a familiar circuit easily. So, there is every chance that in the 2023 season there may already be six different winners of the qualification and six different winners of the pair races.

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