Day 25 – Zavidovo to St Petersburg

The road is long, not much of a winding road. It’s 685kms of mainly straight highway with the only reprieve today being a track event in the late afternoon, 30odd kms from the hotel. And when the crew is buggered from the tedium of the days run. The endurance element really means something. This is what the event is all about, how to break the man and the machine.

We are officially starting out at 8.55am.

The hotel was nice last night but by the time you get in and do the car maintenance and eat, it’s bedtime. Up at 4.30, that’s habitual now, then breakfast and the waiting game begins till start.

Russia is impressive and if I’m repeating myself, apologies.

We began well, a good breakfast and after waiting some time we hit the road.

A couple of hundred kms while it rained and it was cold. Then a miscalculation of direction and once more backtracking 80kms to the PC. Instead of checking and responding to each waypoint I had loaded the entire days headings into the GPS and so although we were heading for the end of day MTC, it was an interim waypoint that we should have aimed for which was in a different direction.

We got there for the PC with seconds to spare. But that’s not the end of the miscalculations. We got to the racetrack at the end of the day, did our two circuits and in good time too.

Then the last stretch, 37kms to the hotel and the MTC. As we got closer to the city the traffic density intensified and the distances between road take offs were shorter and an incorrect road was taken.

Once off the correct course at rush hour is fatal.

Thank goodness for the GPS. Even this was difficult to interpret as the arrows were small and needed magnification then reduced to get a picture of where we were headed.

All in all it was a bad afternoon re navigation and time. It was impossible to get to the MTC in the allotted scheduled time.

St Petersburg is a very large and significant city. It’s well populated with cars and people.

So getting around is fraught with the chances of getting lost; We did, once on the freeway trying to get to the destination from the incorrect location. Its a busy rush hour, city is more than stressful for the crew at the best of time.

We got there in the end buggered and disappointed that we had lost so much time.