Sporting Equator on the Track near St Petersburg: Racing Weekends and a Formula 1 Drivers' Race

In August, at the Igora Drive circuit, all drivers and teams from the country's top racing championship will take part in the competition. The intrigue in the top class remains: the experienced favourites simply cannot catch the newcomer leading the Russian Championship. In the marathon races, the battle between Russian racing cars and the Mercedes-AMG and Lamborghini supercars will continue. Racing interactive activities: in the paddock, every spectator will be able to undergo tests to assess their readiness to take part in racing.

The season of the Russian Circuit Racing Series, the most extensive and prestigious racing championship in the country, has reached its halfway point. And the middle of the season will be marked by a true motorsport celebration at the country's finest racing circuit, the Igora Drive autodrome near St Petersburg. Two consecutive race weekends will take place there: 8-9 and 15-16 August.

Over the four days, spectators will be able to see cars from all classes competing in the series (more than 150 cars in total) on track. And they can watch the races in both formats – both sprint races of up to an hour in length (the SMP RSKG Sprint series) and the multi-hour marathon (a round of the SMP RSKG Endurance series). The packed sporting programme of the weekend will be complemented by an equally packed entertainment schedule. This, as is traditional, makes SMP RSKG racing appealing not only to motorsport fans, but also to anyone looking for a way to enjoy their summer weekends without a hint of boredom.

On 8 and 9 August, sprint races will take place across 5 classes – including the top-tier SMP TCR Russia category featuring the fastest drivers and strongest teams, and the SMP TCR Russia supercar class. And in both of the aforementioned categories, the leaders are not at all those who were considered favourites before the start of the season.

In the SMP TCR Russia class, throughout the entire first half of the season, Maxim Soldatov (TAIF Motorsport team) has occupied the top spot in the standings, and he is competing in his first full season in the top category of Russian circuit racing. Fans expected that in June or July the more experienced rivals would strip the young Muscovite of his lead, but time and again Maxim has been among the most successful drivers of each round. He now has three race victories to his name – while none of his rivals has managed to win more than once. And if any of those rivals seriously wants to challenge Soldatov for the Russian Champion title, then the situation must be turned around precisely at the round near St Petersburg: after all, another successful weekend could well give the leader the chance to play a game of damage limitation in the remaining rounds.

A similar situation is unfolding in the supercar category. Although the Russian Cup field includes some highly accomplished sportsmen (for instance, Mikhail Aleshin, who has tested Formula 1 cars and performed successfully in the prestigious American IndyCar series), the overall standings are confidently led by Samara-based amateur racer Vadim Meshcheryakov, driving a Mercedes-AMG for the RSCar Motorsport team.

The main event of the second weekend (15-16 August) will be the 6-hour race scheduled for Saturday, the second round of the SMP RSKG Endurance marathon series. It features the fastest cars competing in Russian circuit racing. And these are cars that differ greatly from one another: the BR03 sport prototypes, designed by Russian engineers specifically for racing, compete against modified foreign supercars such as the Mercedes-AMG GT3 and Lamborghini Huracan. In the first race of the season, a 12-hour marathon at the Moscow Raceway circuit, the crews in the BR03s finished in the top two positions – and their rivals in foreign cars will no doubt be looking to exact revenge.

That will not be easy, because the BR03s are also driven by the country's finest racers. In particular, the most successful crew includes two Russian Formula 1 drivers, Vitaly Petrov and Sergey Sirotkin. However, there are also star drivers among the opposition: the Capital RT squad, for example, fields the aforementioned Mikhail Aleshin.

However, watching the races at SMP RSKG rounds is merely the beginning of a grand journey into the world of motorsport. As at other race weekends, spectators can venture to where the racing atmosphere is felt most keenly. For instance, they can stroll along the start-finish straight while preparations are under way for the start of a session, or take a guided tour of the team garages. At the 8-9 August round, a pit-lane walk will take place each day: during this time, the teams roll their cars out of the garages, and the drivers are at the complete disposal of fans for a full 40 minutes – for chats, photographs and autographs. Meanwhile, the advanced racing simulators from the SMP Esports sim-racing project will help fans feel like racing drivers, tearing around a virtual version of the Igora Drive circuit in a digital race car.

You can follow the races from Nizhny Novgorod live on the SMP RSKG public page on the VK social network and on the SMP RSKG channel on the Rutube video service. Some of the races will also be broadcast live by the channels of the Match TV holding company.

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