Sigdals Rally this weekend - toon in for the snowy goodness!

18.01.2019

This weekend Nikolay Gryazin and Yaroslav Fedorov will take part in the first round of the Norwegian Rally Championship.

Sigdalsrally is a winter rally held on the snowy roads of Eggedal valley. For Nikolay it marks the first step in preparation for Sweden's WRC round. This one-day rally contains eight special stages with a total length of 92.27 km.

It won't be the first Sigdalsrally for Nikolay and Yaroslav. Last year, our crew finished this race first almost a minute ahead of runner-up Anders Grøndal. This year's entry list includes quite a few WRC celebrities, too. In addition to Grøndal among them are Henning Solberg (Škoda Fabia R5), Mads Østberg (Subaru Impreza WRX STI) and Ole Christian Veiby (VW Polo R5).

The crew performed a series of tests before departing for Sigdal.

Nikolay Gryazin: "Last year, Sigdalsrally was a fantastic, most satisfying experience. It was the winter season opener — just like this time — and surprisingly we finished first. Moreover, we were the first Russian crew to win this event in Norway. Very pleasant feeling.

Here is a moment we won't soon forget: at the start line of one of the special stages it was Henning Solberg who run towards us. He started the stage before us, made a mistake and had to return at the start line to make a u-turn.

We set the same goals for Sigdalsrally this season as the year before that. Instead of doing whatever it takes to finish the race we will focus on maximum speed and take every opportunity to push. This round allows us to get a bit frisky and go fast whereas Rally Sweden is all about consistent performance.

A rally with drivers this strong is a great chance to challenge the local talents and see where we stand prior to the important race in Sweden. That is exactly why we attend Scandinavian Sigdalsrally and Finnskog. These rallies allow us to test the setups and pick up the pace before WRC debut in Sweden.

We ran some fine-tuning tests ahead of the rally. Among other things, we intended to find a solution for high tire wear which is almost inevitable in Sweden and can cause a lot of problems with car control. To do that we performed several tests using tires with little to no studs."

The first round of the Norwegian championship will be held on January 19th with the first special stage of Sigdalsrally scheduled to start at 09:38 GMT time.

Info via www.nikoaly-gryazin.com