Gavrilov claims pole in surprising Qualifying

Carville Racing’s Klim Gavrilov and his Volkswagen Golf GTI claimed pole position in the TCR Russia event at Moscow Raceway in a Qualifying session that delivered surprising results.
It was a sweet revenge for Gavrilov, who had won the opening race of the season and then left Lukoil Racing. In fact, after moving to LTA Racing from the previous event at Kazan, today Gavrilov has set the fastest lap of 1:43.189, ousting Andrej Maslennikov who had replaced him at Lukoil Racing and set a provisional pole of 1:43.695 in his SEAT León DSG.
A further surprise came from championship returnee Vitaliy Dudin who drove his Akhmat Racing Team Golf GTI to clock the third fastest lap of 1:43.756. Current points leader and reigning champion Dmitri Bragin qualified fourth in the TAIF Motorsport Audi RS3 LMS (1:43.815) ahead of the Lukoil Racing Audi cars of Aleksey Dudukalo (1:44.149) and Ivan Lukashevich (1:44.297).
Efin Gantmakher achieved a brilliant ninth position on his first appearance in the series at the wheel of a Neva Motorsport Cupra.
The three LADA Vesta cars run by the LADA Sport Rosneft team struggled to stay on the pace and qualified 12^th (Vladimir Sheshenin), 16^th (Mikhail Grachev) and 18^th (Kirill Ladygin).
It is worth to point out that the running weight of Gavrilov’s VW is 1290kg, against 1260 of Maslennikov’s SEAT DSG and Golikov’s VW. Bragin’s Audi runs at 1400kg, while the LADA cars range from 1390 (Sheshenin’s and Grachev’s) to 1430kg (Ladygin’s).
The first race will start tomorrow at 11:45 local time (10:45 CET); live streaming at www.tcr-series.com and www.tcr-series.tv.