The victory of Rob Huff’s LADA Granta at Beijing Goldenport was the realization of a dream that began seven years ago.
A few people remember that Victor Shapovalov – today Team Principal at LADA Sport – made his first appearance in the World Championship as a driver in 2007. Together with his fellow countrymen Evgeny Zelenov and Lev Fridman, Shapovalov raced for the Russian Bears Motorsport at Zandvoort and Valencia in BMW 320i cars. They were the first Russians to join WTCC.
But Victor had a dream: involving a Russian car manufacturer with a factory programme.
This ambitious programme had a shy start in 2008, when the Russian Bears ran a couple of LADA 110 in selected events. The cars had Russian homologation papers and therefore were not eligible to score points.
In the following season the team was renamed LADA Sport and added a third car. At Porto they launched the new Priora WTCC and signed James Thompson as leading driver and tester. The Briton scored the first WTCC points for LADA claiming two sixth places at Imola. Unfortunately, the programme was stopped at the end of the year due to the financial crisis.
But Shapovalov did not give up and the LADA Sport team came back in 2012 with a single Granta for Thompson at Budapest and Algarve.
The rest is recent history, with the arrival of 2012 WTCC champion Huff and the launch of the Vesta that will be racing from next year.
After yesterday’s triumph Shapovalov was moved to tears: “We have come a long way to achieve this victory and we always believed that LADA would be on the top of the podium! We are extremely happy, and this victory gives us even more drive and motivation for further success!”