I could get into the Guinness Book of Records. Honestly! Because the plan at mazdovskoy press service was excellent. Winners Zoom-Zoom Challenge, first place prize at the training track Hockenheimring, and then a team of ten roadster Mazda MX-5 go to Essen, where members join the European fan-club Mazda - and together with us form the world's longest convoy of identical cars .This will be a Guinness!
But to do this in a column train should be all ten of the Russian cars. And I, heck, I'm sitting behind the wheel of an ode of them - and wait until the smoke in the cabin will shatter from the deployed airbags and shall fade its dome. Before my eyes - a concrete crash barrier Hockenheimring.
Interestingly, the man who wrecked the Guinness Book record for himself in this book can get? Well, at least in part dubious achievements ...
They say that beginners luck.
Apparently, that's why editing Autoreview and decided for the next race Mazda Zoom-Zoom Challenge is not to second pilot Yuri wind or Pasha Karina, has successfully performed at the past "Challenge", and me - a man without any racing experience.
On the other hand, and the race itself to match.
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| "A common mistake behind the wheel rear-wheel drive car" - "comforted" Kesselman. Contact with the striker only came on the wheel and rear wing, but the blow opened the passenger side airbag |
Zoom-Zoom Challenge - it's amateur championship, I mean professional athletes login here ordered. Direct combat on the track too, is not provided: acting more like a club pokatushki during track days - each participant will compete only with a stopwatch.Conventional cars, and this time - two-liter roadsters Mazda MX-5.
Requirement for participants to one thing - to be "mazdovodom and a member of the official Mazda-club. But if Europe itself fan clubs and spend like cabal, we have the initiative came from the top: Zoom-Zoom Challenge for the fourth year a mazdovskimi marketers. This kind of investment in customer loyalty.
At this time, "invested" more than usual. If earlier preliminaries were held in the regions, but now all stages, including the final - only to suburban racetrack in Myachkovo, who had rented for nearly a week. A grand prize - a training session on the Hockenheimring - will no longer triple winners, and Twenty winners. That is, four teams.
Athletic Rules mazdovskih racing is changing almost every year, and this time the Zoom-Zoom Challenge has become the first team competition. Everyone is now not for himself but for his "stable" from the five pilots. Your best lap time is composed of partners with the best time - and this amount is the result of the team: win the one where he had less.
Journalists come to grips with the July semi-finals, along with 24 club teams from 15 regions of Russia. But if "mazdovody on five broken themselves, the journalists - based on qualifications.
Then I first time lucky - I failed qualification.
That is, at first I did not realize that with the method of forming teams, when each "stable" should get an equal number of fast and slow participants, more profitable not just laid out, and pretend serednyachki - and distribute a "stable" with the faster drivers. Instead, I pressed that is urine and even showed a nice time, but - "pinch": Carry a pair of cones, which was limited myachkovskaya trail, and picked up so many penalty seconds, which at once slipped into the lower part of the protocol. And - imagine that! - Was in command at once with two top pilots!
Did not work. In the race team, competitors were still quicker than us. But in our "stable" was not enough of a participant, which means that someone will have to go for two. Who - will decide fate.
In professional sport, this is called a command tactics, we are simply cheat. Matches we pulled so "lucky" could be only one of us - online journalist Vadim Gagarin, who showed the best lap time. The only flaw of this plan was Misha Petrovsky, Glavred portal drive.ru and captain of the opponents, who saw all our "coin toss". An official protest to referee Mike flew faster than race around the track!
We will not be disqualified, not even fined. Was perezherebevka. Now everything is fair. And what a confirmation: I drew lots.
I was not just lucky - I just did PEYRELEAU at every turn! Well with a fright in the heat of the sorokagradusnuyu Myachkovo sudden downpour flooded? And where it will evaporate when it was my turn to go on the road? Ten minutes ago, all contestants were dragged through puddles, and I'm flying on drying soil asphalt! And even if the two of arrival, I was unable to win back all the lost time, but our team has surged to second place: we are in the finals! Map of flooded! The main thing - do not miss out on Courage. Especially now, in the final race, we need only a victory! But opponents, journalists still faster - the amount by as much as two minutes. Fortunately, the overwhelming superiority of known competitors, but because at the last moment relaxed, stacked cones - and get the twelve penalty minutes. Victory!
And here I am in Germany, in the town of Hockenheim in Baden-Wuerttemberg.
The difference between the Hockenheimring and the Nurburgring Nordschleife, where mazdovtsy invited the winners of the past "Challenge" (AP № 1, 2009) - as the section between boxing and street fighting. In the green hell anyone can get: come, pay - and riding at your own risk. At the Hockenheimring all boring, academic, more expensive, but safer. Turns seventeen, asphalt, perfectly flat, vertical drop of almost no, but there is a wide security zone and the gravel trap.
Theoretically, there are also days for Touristenfahrten, «tourist" arrivals, when the race track release everyone on normal road cars. The only requirement - does not violate the noise standards (maximum - 90 dB). And it is even more profitable trip to the Nurburgring: fifteen minutes each session at chetyrehkilometrovom definable ring will cost 15 euros per car, while one dvadtsatikilometrovaya circle on Nordschleife is 19 to 24 euros. Also at the Hockenheimring cars and motorcycles produced separately. But in fact, track almost all the time busy racing or closed club events: for the whole last year has happened only six "days of tourist."
Want to drive on the Hockenheimring? Then recorded in any racing club or on a variety of local courses driving skills. But that's another money.
Or go to mazdovskuyu Academy of sporty driving.
Last autumn, the Academy under the guidance of driver Oleg Kesselman started to conduct studies not only in the suburban Myachkovo, but also on the European Circuit - for "definable" Nurburgring, at Spa and Hockenheim.
This is not Touristenfahrten - at Hockenheimring Academy works together with the German automobile clubs Pistenklub. Entry fee to the machine - 450 euros for the track day. The second driver - another 150 euros. Plus petrol. Those who have more free money, rent and boxes (a few hundred euros), and a team of engineers - not to lose time off the track. But Kesselman recognized that for the sake of brand image and advertising effect Mazda covers a significant portion of the cost. As a result, Russian customers rate on any of the European routes will cost only 50 rubles! Including a flight from Moscow, accommodation, food and even petrol! There are, however, one condition: the first in Myachkovo to take courses Intensive Sport (nine thousand rubles) and the Active Sport (15,000 rubles). Another 24 thousand.But anyway - within reason.
Fight easy - difficult in the teaching! Podmoskovnye race, as you know, ended our triumph, and now our task - to reel in circles, cramming the track, and refine the trajectory to follow the advice Kesselman. The most difficult of them sounded like this: do not bully each other and not compete with those who are faster.
In Hockenheim we believe were the first cadets.
At kilometer arc Parabolic 150-strong Mazda MX-5 - though enthusiastic, had just reached sexual maturity rate, had come with a pack of hounds. Fly past the Ferrari, Lamborghini, BMW, Audi, but mostly - Porsche 911 of all generations and ages. And you seem to need to keep a full gas to at least stay in place.
After Parabolic - stud Spitzkehre, before which you want to contrive, and brake, and do not kill at once pads and dodge club cars with their carbon-ceramic. And now the fun part. After a bunch of rotations around an ultramodern Mercedes-tribune you fly into a corner Mobil 1 - and turns on Motodrome. First passes funnel rotation Sachs, then jump over undulating "Teschin language" and "licking" one hundred thousandth the rostrum in the southern corner, jumps to the start straight.
Each ten-minute session, I have enough for three or four fast laps. But the faster the wheels, the faster passes MX-5 - swinging in the corners, no longer confident of slowing down. In contrast, the roadster with the "mechanics", which I visited Myachkovo this car with automatic transmission. The softer suspension, lightweight steering wheel, accelerator blunted, and the box - no honest manual mode: you have already clicked the trigger, but at the same time decided to switch and electronics - and where on the corner exit you desperately need a third channel, you discover the treacherous fourth.
Luck did not leave me. I grasped the route on the fly, other students did not concede much, but it happened that some places do not even kept up with supercars. In general, it was pleased with himself. While behind the wheel did not sit Oleg Kesselman.
It turns out that emerges from the same hairpin Spitzkehre can be directly on the technical side - so the trajectory is wider. It turns out that before the North superelevation is almost no need to brake, and the last two rotation Motodroma as "ESG" entry into the Parabolic, you need to pass a long-arc, and the crackdown on ...
I like his sight. Depressed mood quickly gave way to a feeling that behind me, cut the wings.
Ten next corner I succeeded perfectly. Flawlessly and I included in the eleventh - called Mobil 1. Formula race cars are face down from 300 to 170 km / h, and then just before the concrete wall, which cut off straight for the drag racing, dive into the treacherous right arc with a negative bias. Mazda here, of course, slower, but hung with the ring spoilers Audi TT ... But he was far away in the mirrors - and suddenly ... How he managed to squeeze between me and the apex? Loosen the steering wheel, instinctively throwing gas. Too abruptly - a skid!Steering wheel to the left. Too late - the gravel ... lawn, asphalt, lawn again ...
Here, as in spirit: when you fly nose in the bump, the last thing you think about the Guinness record. I cursed myself for having jumped behind the wheel and raced without checking whether to enable ESP, I thanked the FIA and personally Hermann Tilke a wide security zone, I kept going if I can pay more for damage and Circuit ...
I once again lucky. Just before the striker went to feed back the whip, Mazda launched - and I do not ram the concrete wall, and only strike sharply on her right rear fender.
There were no casualties, damage, too, and even a car on the move - in boxes, and then in the service he went alone. After all, luck, right?
And so it was strange to see that person mazdovtsah not. It came only after I was told: in Essen, this machine will not go - and the record, for whom everything was started, can not take place.
According to the organizers appeared that our roadster - is not just a roadster. Ten vehicles from Russia - part of the "iron" pool record in the column must be one hundred percent, and will meet or not all the others - minor matters.
It is only later, after reading the Guinness Book, I realized that in fact record is not in danger. In Essen, were to meet for about six hundred cars. Hence, to smash the absolute record of going in a convoy of cars of one model (and it belongs to the Brazilian fans folksvagenovskogo Beetle in 1995, who collected 2,728 cars) still would not work. That is, at stake was a record intra - the number of cars coming together Mazda.
It is also a kind of Zoom-Zoom Challenge - only among marketers. European Office Mazda just wanted to outdo their Australian counterparts, who in 2002 hit the Guinness Book of Records by collecting the column of 249 of the same MX-5.
Record would be held even if the gravel Hockenheim were all ten of our roadsters!
But then, near the crippled Mazda, I felt like a visitor who tripped and fell into the wedding cake.
Salvation came from the headquarters of Mazda. It now lines the official press release sound humdrum: "Last chance to take part in a record - two seats in the freed crew - was sold at auction eBay». And when the day before the record of Hockenheim came the news about the "free the crew, the idea to put the place up for auction looked like the last straw.
Lot torn from his hands!
And in general, 600 machines - a maximum that mazdovtsy were technically able to organize, but wanting to get into the Guinness Book showed up much more! No wonder that on the night the price of "last chance" instantly soared from 25 to 224 euros: this amount for two German "mazdovoda" and bought a place in the column. To claim their share, I did not.
The next day, in Guinness World Records has got the longest in the world column roadster Mazda MX-5 - 458 and from another machine.Record held.
And I flew to Moscow yesterday. In the Guinness Book of Records'll get some other time. I am in fact lucky!
To participate in the record was filed more than 600 applications, but up to the counter at the finish line arrived only 561 roadster, and the Guinness Book of Records has got only 459 cars. Guinness Book of commissioners did not take a credit machine, violating the basic condition: the distance between cars should not exceed two buildings. It may not hit the book and the gray roadster, who went out of the column to take a picture for memory
