Lada working on third car for Imola

Lada announced their participation in the World Touring Car Championship back in 2005, but it took untill May 18th of this year before their actually was a Lada at the start of a WTCC race. Now, five races later, it’s time to meet up with Viktor Shapalov, who runs and drives for the Russian Bears Motorsport team.

In May you tested the new car here at Oschersleben. How well do you know the track and how familiar are you with the car now?

Since then we had quite some progress. We know now that we need more horse powers! We’re working on that for next year. It’s a shame we don’t have a better engine now, because we have good aerodynamics. During the season it’s very difficult for us. The chassis is very good and we are working in different directions.

Now we have a good balance so the car should be competitive on short tracks. Good results should come next year with the new engine. During the next winter we should have enough time.

How difficult is it to develop the Lada for a small team?

It is very difficult because we didn’t have much time to prepare the car. But next year we should have a new Lada model! And we are working on a third car for the next race at Imola. When that works out the driver will be a Russian, who is also a testdriver from Lada. Then we would get more support from Lada.

The Lada project is for three years?

Yes it is! This year is only testing and next year we would like to have a new car. When we would have the new model we also would have more technical support from Lada. They want to change their image and for Lada the WTCC is a good base to show what they want to be in the future.

Where do you get the budget from for car? Do you pay all the bills on your own?

No, no! We have some rich sponsors from Russia who want to support us because they love this sport. We are working with 15 people in the team. They all come from Russia. Jaap is the only one who is from another country. It was very difficult for him at the beginning but now it is working ok. And we also have support from England for the engine.

The base of the team is in The Netherlands. But most of the team personnel is living in Russia. To have a team based in Russia is to difficult. The distances are too big for it to make sense.