Circuit Racing – the beginning of it all! 

SRT is very well known for its achievements in rally, but circuit racing is what started this whole team! Ģirts Krūzmanis and his first big steps in motorsports were also the foundation of this team. Ģirts has been involved in motorsport since he was just 12 years old when he started to participate in karting practises. From 1997 till 2001 Ģirts drove for racing team Arčers, where he had the role of second pilot. After someone had suggested it – Ģirts decided that it was time to establish his own racing team and in 2002 sports club Spice was registered. That was the debut year in which the team took active participation in various national and Baltic circuit racing events.

Already in the first year the team had great success and stood proud on the podium – Ģirts Krūzmanis won 2nd place overall in the Latvian national championship. The Second year came with an even bigger success because Ģirts became the Baltic champion of circuit racing. The Baltic champion title was defended in years to come – 2004 and 2005. At the time Spice started with multiple race cars on the grid. The team represented circuit racing drivers like Jānis Kārkliņš, Ģirts Melnbiksis, Agris Petrovskis, Māris Neikšāns, Andis Neikšāns, Juris Sprūdis, Egons Lapiņš and Igors Grušeļevsksis. But, years later in 2014, a very proud moment for the team came as Boris Shulmeister became the Champion of Russia in circuit racing. And his very good friend and apprentice Nikolay Gryazin took 2nd place in the championship.

 “This season was impressive, long and most of all - hard, but in spite of that, with the help of the very professional team SRT, I managed to gain amazing results and most importantly during this season the talent of Nikolay Gryazin truly showed. Now he has become an amazing rally driver and is still a part of SRT. Maybe we wouldn’t have achieved these results if we had a different team and none of the following wonderful things would have happened. At that time, it was very hard to organize an entire team going to Russia with multiple sports cars. Because sometimes Vasiliy Gryazin also joined us we needed at least three. All that I can say is that Ģirts Krūzmanis and his team was always on top of things and when we arrived to the track, we were very different from the other teams. Our cars, our tents and equipment – somehow it was much more organized and the style was clean and well thought out. For me circuit racing means a lot because I have tried everything there is to try in autosport and it is still my favourite kind of racing. The main reason I love this sport is the creativity of it, it’s not as intense as rally where you have to improvise before every turn, but the creativity of circuit racing appears more in the academic skills of the pilot. In circuit racing you have to work very hard at small details to go towards progress. And in this I think that Nikolay Gryazin is very skilled and it showed during the circuit races already. Also – this is what I have in common with him. I think of SRT as my dear friends, because I felt very at home with them during every race. It was comfortable and easy to work with them. I trust this team and I trust they will do their very best by everyone who chooses to race with them.” – Boris Shulmeister