No. 1, 2004

Racing like a silver shadow on the ice of the frozen-over river Mulyanka, the white Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution VI completes one lap after another. Every winter this river in the city of Perm is turned into an ice-covered race-course. The automobile hurtles along, leaving a trail of twirling snow in its wake. The turns it makes are fast and precise, chalking up the number of circuits – first clockwise and then counterclockwise.

Beside the course there stands a man wearing a warm flight jacket. From time to time he consults his stopwatch and makes notes. This is a routine training session of the LUKOIL Rally Team in preparation for the coming competitions. Behind the steering wheel of the Mitsubishi is an experienced driver, many-time winner of national championship tournaments and Cup of Russia competitions. He is Yuri Trutnev, the Governor of the Perm Region. Watching him from the roadside is his coach, an 11-time USSR rally-racing champion, Master of Sport, International Class, Vladimir Goltsov. For many years he was a member of the USSR rally team, and later he won many competitions as pilot of the KamAZ team which took part in the Paris-Dakar and Paris-Beijing supermarathon races. In the opinion of the experienced coach, racing on ice enables one to perfect driving skill, to acquire the knack of handling the motor vehicle almost automatically. All that must be achieved while riding at maximum speeds; even when skidding, the vehicle must remain fully controllable.

One of the most important skills of a driver taking part in a rally race is the ability to make a shorthand description of a road circuit. The coach and his sportsman conduct such a training on the former airfield of “Bakharevka” belonging to a local airlines company. Sitting behind the wheel, Yuri Trutnev dictates to his navigator: “Distance, reference point, distance...” A reference point may be a turn in the road, a boulder at the side, a ditch and so on, as well as the distance between them. Later on the navigator will read this shorthand description back to the pilot who should be able to visualize the course in any weather, when visibility is poor, and even driving in the dark.

Yuri Trutnev's career as a sports car driver began in February 2000, almost a year before he became Governor of the Perm Region. He then took part in the Rally President stage of the Cup of Russia competition held in Yaroslavl. Three years previously, he got behind the wheel of a rally vehicle for the first time. What had begun as a hobby and simply as a desire to improve his driving skill soon grew into a mastery recognized by top-notch racing car drivers in Russia.

The first major success was scored by Yuri Trutnev when he was a member of the Urals rally team of Yekaterinburg and became a silver prize winner in the Cup of Russia rally-racing competition. He and his navigator were awarded the Master of Sport title. With 25 stages in the national championship tournaments and in the Cup of Russia competitions to his credit, the Perm Governor and his crew won three victories in terms of qualifying points in Cup of Russia stages, five times he mounted the prize-winners' podium to receive the silver award, and three times to get the bronze; as a result, he placed second in the absolute Cup of Russia standings.

Then Yuri Trutnev and his navigator, Oleg Kondratyev, were invited to join Stanislav Gryazin's GS-rally team. And last season the titled sportsman won the bronze medal of Russia's multistage rally championship. This award was handed to him by the emissary of the Russian Federation of Auto Sport and Tourism during the final competitions of the national championship in winter track-racing staged on the courses of the Perm race track in early 2003.

Since 2002 the Perm Governor, Yuri Trutnev, and the well-known rally sportsman, Stanislav Gryazin, have taken part in competitions under the red-and-white flag of LUKOIL. In the last season, even though he was too busy fulfilling his duties as Governor, Yuri Trutnev, the rally driver, performed very well. One of the most dramatic stages of the championship tournament were the races in the coal-mining town of Gukovo, Rostov Region. Driving their red-and-white Mitsubishi Lancer there on a course which had turned to mud after a long rainy period, the Trutnev-Kondratyev crew turned over. However, they were lucky: having turned over, the automobile stood on its wheels again. So the pilot put it into gear, and the crew continued the race. True, they had lost at least five seconds doing that. On the last day of the competition, the LUKOIL crew were at least 40 seconds behind their main rival, and few people believed that they would be able to regain time. But the Perm Governor-led crew managed to concentrate on the task ahead of them and cut the lag by 20 seconds. They accomplished what seemed impossible: in the Gukovo stage of the competition the Trutnev-Kondratyev crew placed fourth, securing for themselves the bronze medals of the Russian championship in rally racing.

At his home in Perm, the Governor manages to devote to training only two or three days in a year. But he fills them to the utmost.

Back on the Mulyanka ice, coach Goltsov organizes a new exercise. In a space of about 50 by 50 meters, fluorescent cones mark a course consisting of conjugated turns – left and right. The course is to be raced through against the clock. The vehicle seems to be dancing on ice around the central buoy, its spiked wheels leaving traces on ice resembling Lissajous figures. In the long run, the sweating pilot kills the engine and emerges from the car for a brief rest and a cup of hot tea which he drinks right there in the open.

In the meantime, the coach takes off his warm flight jacket and gets behind the wheel. Back on the ice is the same old ace driver, Vladimir Goltsov, who enraptured the spectators at the Perm race track many years ago. The stopwatch shows that he is a couple of seconds better than his charges. “There's an International Master for you!” Yuri Trutnev remarks philosophically. “We'll have to work hard yet to achieve his level.”