OREANDA-NEWS. February 24, 2014. The “Za Rulyom – Sport” team driving sport versions of Sobol Business and GAZelle Next vehicles had a successful start in this year’s rally raids season.

The Sobol Business crew ranked the first in Raid Sport class in the first leg of Russian Championship “Northern Forest – 2014”, which took place in Leningrad region. The “Za Rulyom – Sport” team as the third in the standings.

The location of the exciting off-road route of the “Russia- Northern Forest – 2014” rally raid was close to Saint Petersburg.  The circuit length was over 300 km.

Over 30 crews took part in the race including world leading crews from X-Raid and Overdrive Racing teams – winners of Dakar 2014 rally. GAZ vehicles were the only Russian vehicles to compete with top performance prototypes under colors of famous automotive sport brands.

Despite the intense competition on the part of world rally stars the GAZ vehicles’ drivers were confident about their power capacity, reliability and off-road capability and employed an aggressive tactics during the race. The Sobol Business crew (driver Alexander Kosturkov, navigator Oleg Nezhnov) handled all twists and turns of the slippery and treacherous rally track perfectly and won the well-deserved first prize in Raid Sport class by a large margin.

“Snow, mild frost, narrow trails amidst ancient pine trees created an unusual atmosphere that was not typical for rally raids and therefore very exciting. A winter race is a great opportunity for a team to demonstrate its strength and readiness for the beginning sports season, - says Alexey Koptev, the “Za Rulyom – Sport” team manager. – Today’s success was not achieved thanks to just our drivers and high-performance vehicles, it the result of joint efforts of GAZ designers, experts of Total and Michelin and Cummins engineers”.

“We made new adjustments to the powerful engines of GAZelle and Sobol based on the race specifics, - says Oleg Yakovlev, an engineer of Cummins company. – We managed to adapt the engine torque both for the high-speed sections of the track and for quick gear shifts on narrow sections. All the drivers were content with the torque performance of the stock Cummins ISF 2.8 engine”.

After the “Northern Forest – 2014” the team will begin training and preparations for the next leg – the “Gold of Kagan” rally raid – which will take place in Astrakhan this April.