Vladimir Sheshenin claimed his second victory of the season in TCR Russia, as he led home his LADA Sport Rosneft teammate Kirill Ladygin in Race 1 at the Smolenskring.
Reigning champion Dmitry Bragin drove his TAIF Motorsport SEAT León to finish in third position ahead of the Lukoil Racing’s duo of Aleksey Dudukalo and Nikolay Karamyshev.
Bragin maintained the lead in the standings, however Sheshenin has managed to reduce the gap to 15 points, while Dudukalo lies third a further 6 points adrift.
At the start, Sheshenin made good use of the pole position and took the lead, despite Bragin’s attempt to pass on the outside line at Turn 1. Soon afterwards, Ladygin overtook Bragin for second. A couple of incidents during the opening lap eliminated Denis Grigoryev and saw Lev Yashin punted into a spin by Roman Golikov.
On lap 3, the safety car was deployed to recover Timur Shigabutdinov’s Audi that had stopped on the track.
When action resumed, Bragin tried to put the pressure on the LADA duo, while immediately behind them Dudukalo and Karamyshev were in a close fight with Vitaliy Dudin.
In the second half of the race, Sheshenin and Ladygin were able to pull away and Bragin settled for third. On the final lap, Ladygin stuck on the rear bumper of Sheshenin’s Vesta, but the leader managed to cross the finish line with a margin of two tenths.
The second race will start on Sunday at 14:30 local time.