Photo is courtesy of our own Phil Allaway.
"Today, I, the pilot of the Russian G-Drive Racing team, refused to accept the discriminatory conditions of the FIA," Rusinov wrote (Note: The Instagram statement is in Russian and translated via Google Translate).
"The goal of each athlete is to hear the anthem of their country on the podium. Over 10 years of international experience, our team has done this many times. We raised the Russian flag, we heard and sang the Russian anthem. For the sake of my fans, for the sake of my teammates and sporting honor, I will not sign this document. Better not to drive at all."
The only English words in Rusinov's post are a couple of hashtags, #raceasone and #nodiscrimination.
With the WEC season opener in Sebring just 10 days away, such a move would have created a logistical nightmare had the team not competed in the Rolex 24 at Daytona in January (Tijmen van der Helm is pictured above). The team had previously planned to keep their equipment in the United States between Daytona and Sebring. Otherwise, this decision would have been made while their equipment would have
been on a boat floating across the Atlantic Ocean.
G-Drive, the team's sponsor, is a chain of gas stations under the ownership of Gazprom, one of Russia's biggest oil companies and currently under sanction.
- INDYCAR scheduled an open test session to be held Monday at Texas Motor Speedway ahead of the Xpel 375 on March 20. However, temperatures hovered in the 40s for much of the day, resulting in the test day being cancelled due to cold weather. The plan is to try again later this week.
