Congratulations with a real debut!

So the first ever in their racing careers start at the WRC events is happened for Dmitry Tagirov and Anna Zavershinskaya! Their first world level superspecial and the first victory though it was a tiny victory yet. Rally Sweden 2011 had its ceremonial start at 22:00 (Moscow time) on Thursday and the first stage – the superspecial in Karlstad is already completed.

          The final pre-start hours were very busy for the crew. After the photo-session for the WRC video game the crew met the North One people and had the first possibility to talk to the representatives of PWRC General Promoters "live", not via the telephone or email. And the final minutes were again spent with the team, in efforts to make the final adjustments to the car. By the way, Dmitry was not the only one driver who had some difficulties before the start, saying more – some other had not even "difficulties", but the real troubles! The Ukrainian Ascania Team had to replace in the extreme rush the engine on the car of their leader Alexander Saljuk, as the "original" one blew up at the shakedown. Until the TC-1 is passed – such opportunity was possible. The team succeeded in replacing the engine and got the car to the extra scrutineering in time.

      And the first superspecial put Dmitry and Anna face to face for the "parallel" race with the other Ascania crew of Valery Gorban. The atmosphere in Karlstad was a real holiday one, with plenty of spectators and journalists. The Russian crew also was feeling the support as the amount of rally fans is usually big at Rally Sweden and the journalists' "delegation" from Russia could be named an "enormous" one this year – one can hardly remember such in previous years ever! So before the start Dmitry and Anna had seen the flags in the hands of their good friends from Russian STI-club and that encouraged the crew very much! Though it is well-known that it's impossible to win "everything" at superspecials but it is easy to lose everything there and Dmitry was extremely cautious avoiding any risks, that support encouraged him to win that first ever "duel" in his PWRC career, setting the 6th best time in PWRC classification. So the start is not bad, isn't it? But everybody understands that a real rally starts only tomorrow!

    Dmitry TAGIROV: It was a real pleasure and surprise for us when we approached the start line and suddenly saw somebody waving the flags! We had seen the STI-club and Russian flags in the hands of the fans, and we realized, how valuable for us such a support here! But when the green lights were in – it came the turn for the "common" work. We completely switched our attention from everything that is outside the car. The artificial light were bright like it was a daytime so it was a common drive with pacenotes and I can say that I found out that the car behaves itself much better that at the shakedown. But being honest I was much slower at the superspecial than I planned to be. Maybe I tried to calm myself down too much, and was really too calm at the stage: just approaching the curve, turning the wheel and going... But any way the task is fulfilled.

   It was a good show! Lights, fireworks, thousands of spectators and everybody seemed to greet us! Yes, we managed to "switch off" from all the external influences, even from the "duel" on the track. The only thing I had noticed – that we started better than the "rival". Maybe my experience in cross and head-to-head sprints helped me to keep concentration.

And any way the atmosphere of being so close to the top world class drivers is really impressive! We passed on the way to the start all the top crews, they gave us the way as we had the earlier start. All these legends of modern rallies... I even noticed that Kimi Raikkonen was very attentively looking at Anna – maybe he was impressed by her (smiling)..."