Saturday was the first full day of fighting at Aleksandrov Rally, an unique Carpathian race, held this season in the status of the IV stage of the Championship of Ukraine, the VI stage of Russian Championship and the XII stage of European Rally Cup. The contestants fought with the first "portion" of the combat distance from early morning to the evening. It should be noted that the European format of the rally has also brought new rules and in its schedule – a distance of special stages has increased to 180 km. So for Saturday riders overcame six special stages and about 135 fighting kilometers. This is slightly less than the traditional distance of National Championships of Russia and Ukraine! And tomorrow the drivers expect another full day of fighting...

The legendary Shurdyn pass had been included in the program of Saturday – nearly thirty sophisticated kilometers on mountain roads became great decoration of the stage and a challenge for all the participants. But along with Shurdyn two more challenging and fast special stage had been included in a Saturday program. The cars and crews had to cope with this task today. To the credit of the participants, the number of retirements was relatively small, so that the audience could enjoy the struggle between the leaders of the peloton at a full strength.

The top three riders in absolute today were Aleksander Saliuk (Ford Fiesta R5), who won all special stages, except one – SS2 he stepped back to Valeriy Gorban (MINI JCW RRC). At the finish of today's section Gorban was second. Well, closing the three of the fastest riders list in the race on Saturday was Russia's Gennadiy Broslavsky (Mitsubishi Lancer). Let us remind that Broslavskiy currently heads the Russian Championship, and started in the Carpathian track for the first time. Thus the result looks even more significant. However, the driver took to the interim results calmly: "I must confess that I competed today only with myself. My main rivals Dmitriy Tagirov and Andrey Zhigunov started behind us, so I did not even kept tracking the time. The most positive impression of today? I will not play to look original – diversity of the track and its rhythm. And best of all, that tomorrow is another 50 kilometers of the race! I look forward to it".

Hot fighting is expected in class 3, where the best of Ukrainians was Yuriy Kochmar – today he fought for the lead, and managed to overcome all the contenders from compatriots and to get his second in the category. Alas, Anton Kuzmenko and Vitaliy Pushkar, fast drivers of the same scoring category, were not able to get close to top standings due to technical issues. Therefore, tomorrow everyone will try to get even, and these efforts can bring a lot of exciting moments for fans and viewers.

The fastest driver in 2WD classes today became also a guest of the rally, Evgeniy Sukhovenko (Honda Civic Type R) – he claims for the early title in his class in the Russian Championship, and the fate of his title is directly dependent from the results of Aleksandrov Rally. "I need a guaranteed productive finish, so today we opted for a neat tactic, and possibly in some places we could have been faster, but so far I'm happy with intermediate results." It should be noted that, despite the low-key tactics Sukhovenko managed to beat some of the participants of AWD classes! Also an excellent race for Vladimir Kondratenko, who with the similar car takes the following position in the standings of the race.

So, tomorrow, Sunday, racers will start the final battle of Aleksandrov Rally, and compete for points in this most difficult event of the season.