Lada pumped up for first home race in Russia

The LADA Sport Lukoil team will compete on home soil for the first time in their World Touring Car Championship history this weekend as the WTCC heads to the Moscow Raceway for the first time.

The team will again field their two Lada Granta WTCCs for Mikhail Kozlovskiy and British driver James Thompson at the race, though there will be plenty more Ladas to be seen in the paddock with the WTCC being joined by the Lada Granta Cup.

The Hermann Tilke-designed track outside of Moscow began hosting top level motorsports series in earnest last year with visits from the FIA GT1 World Championship and the World Series by Renault.

Lada have prepared for the weekend with some testing at the Smolenskring last week with further technical changes to the Lada Granta, which ran strongly at the first two rounds and enjoyed a best qualifying position of the season with fourth last time out at Austria, though with some help from the FIA stewards handing out penalties to 12 other drivers.

“Moscow Raceway is a medium-speed track that suits WTCC cars well,” said Kozlovskiy.

“There are many different types of corner at the track. The first corner is very fast, while the second sector of the circuit consists mainly of long, medium-speed corners. When it comes to overtaking, the best place is the last corner. There are some great opportunities for attacking and overtaking there.

“It’s definitely a place where you can try out a few things. The whole track is generally at a very high level, with good infrastructure. We’d like to invite all the Russian fans to come along, their support is really valuable and we welcome every single bit of it.”

Two-time British Touring Car champion James Thompson will be competing at the Russian circuit for the first time this weekend, and is buoyed up after a successful test ahead of the race.

“In Moscow we’re going to be doing our very best to fight at the front and set some good lap times. The testing at Smolensk proved to be extremely productive, and we spent a lot of time trying to improve the overall speed of the car. We’re hoping that the setups we found will be suitable for the Moscow Raceway.

“I’m not familiar with the circuit at all but we’ll have a chance to get a proper taste of the track during practice on Friday before the real racing begins. It’s a big honour and responsibility to race for the team at home, so we’ll be doing our very best to meet the expectations of all our fans.”