We finished 14th in the Classic Car Rally Club Final 2015 and 12th in our group, with 41 and 31 teams competing, respectively. Despite missing one race, we successfully completed the season making it into the Top 10 in the team standings, while also ranking among the best 15 drivers and co-drivers.

Photos from the event (many thanks to @prvaleo).

As always, we are driving our ZAZ-965A V4 887 Pumpkin Special LE, decked out in IB Translations’ corporate colours. The car was made by ZAZ in 1967 to mark 50 years since the October Revolution.

Mikhail Tsyferov, driver: “This was our all-time best performance. In fact, getting to the start line was already a major accomplishment. Knowing well enough that it would be a challenging experience, we spared no effort to get ourselves ready. We drew our inspiration from the best of Formula 1 drivers, borrowing some of Kimi Raikkonen’s training practices. In the end, our efforts paid off, as we delivered our best ever performance. The team breezed through the race with only two unfortunate errors that ultimately cost us a place on the podium we longed for. We have learned our lessons and have already made appropriate organisational improvements. Looking back at the past season, we are proud that each race we competed for a winning place, which was our ambition since the spring. Unfortunately, we were out of luck this season, but that is all the more reason to double the effort next year.

Konstantin Golota, co-driver and team owner: “It was a very tight contest towards the end of the season. Last year, we ranked fourth with the same amount of penalty time. We arrived at the final rally with our car running at just about 60% of its capability. However, we still managed to cover all 94 km of the race. This year’s Final took place in the Moscow Region allowing for higher-than-usual speeds. The downside of course was that we had to make a couple of stops to cool the engine. Fortunately, it did not cost us any penalty time. Still, we made a major lapse in the event requiring maintenance of a certain average speed and scored lower than expected.”

Here is a brief overview of the season. We came in fourth in the first race of the season – the Classic Car Rally Club, barely missing the podium. This is our all-time best result so far. The Chopard rally saw us finish seventh, but we ended up in the 11th place in the standings due to a judging error. Despite having to miss one race, we still ranked among the Top 10 in the team competition, which is more than a decent result for the 2015 season.

Many thanks to all our fans who were with us this year. In 2016, our race car will boast a new engine, and the driver and co-driver will switch roles.

On to victory!