Dmitry Tagirov

IT'S TIME TO MAKE THE DREAMS COME TRUE!

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So, here comes the time for dreams to come true! The crew of Dmitry TAGIROV and Anna ZAVERSHINSKAYA had already arrived to Karlstad, and the Russian tri-colored flag is already fluttering in front of Rally HQ as the sportsmen themselves left for the reconnaissance. So soon we would hear their first impressions of the route of their first ever World Rally. But the week before the event was also busy for the crew…

On February, 2^nd the URT team location in Moscow hosted a media conference, where the plans of Subaru Team Russia were announced. The chief of Subaru Russian office Mr. Ioshida confirmed that the brand is really keen to support the rally team, and there are good reasons to call it “Subaru Team Russia”. The cars that are used by the team are really Russian-built, despite they are still Subaru Imprezas! Uspensky Rally Technica performs such deep modifications to the cars while they are prepared for the competition purposes, that they are even fulfill the certification of the vehicle, receiving the appropriate Confirmation paper and own VIN. And the next reason to call the team “Russian” is the Subaru’s popularity among the country’s rally fans. Nationwide STI-Club would pay a great attention to the team’s program, and this is a good reason for further uniting of the brand fans.

The first driver for the team would again be Swede Patrik Flodin, who is, despite he is quite young, now regarded one of the strongest figures in PWRC lineup. Patrik is the Production Vice-champion of 2010, and he was also the Russian national Champion in 2009. For 2011 PWRC program he received the support from oil giant LUKOIL. Evgeny Malinovsky, who is the chief of LUKOIL motorsports program, said: “You know, we are not the company that is spoiling money. If we invest into something – we always know, what we can get. We believe in Patrik, we were watching his fight for the title in 2010 and we think he can become the World Champion in the oncoming season.

Dmitry TAGIROV doesn’t announce the immediate goals of such a level, as the driver realizes it is almost impossible to beat the more experienced PWRC regulars in the very first attempt. He doesn’t want to take unnecessary extra risks just from the start, but hopes he could join the leading company quite soon. “We had a serious preparation period, we did some events this winter already and even managed to win the first round of the Russian championship. So I hope we are ready for new horizons, PWRC is opening to us. We had a lot of proposals from different teams, but we selected URT as we know that this team has a good experience on the world level. We did some domestic events with URT already and were completely satisfied with their work!” – Dmitry said.

There would be the third crew joining Subaru Team Russia in Sweden also. But Serguey Karyjakin and Natalia Potapova are not registered for PWRC points and their further plans are not unveiled yet.

Dmitry Tagirov and Anna Zavershinskaya would use the URT’2009 car for Sweden (that is N14 analogue), as now only one 2010-spec (N15) car is ready and it would be used by Flodin. Tagirov would receive the latest spec vehicle later in the season.

On their way to Karlstad, that hosts the Rally of Sweden for many years, the team made a stop in Southern Finland for the pre-event tests. And on February, 7^th Dmitry and Anna had arrived to Sweden. That rally is famous for its “wide-spread geography” as the stages are quite far from the host town. So the pre-start schedule is going to be very busy! But we hope to hear the first impressions from the crew soon.

It is still difficult to make any prognoses - even the weather ones. Yesterday Varmland met the crews with mud and wet snow, but shiny blue skies welcomed tham this morning. The temperature keeps not far from zero, though some trend for a light frost coulf be noticed. So we hope that the best prognoses come true. Both for the weather and for the results of Russian crew at this event!