Yesterday when your roving reporter was walking back from the office to his (temporary) appartment I came across a totally unexpected example of Motorsport in Kazakhstan. On a square in the middle of the city of Almaty the Kazakh motorsport federation in co-operation with local Subura dealer Astana Motors had set up a sort of double slalom circuit where robbers between two cars had to establish the winner. The first part was straight forward with a slalom past three pylons, but then things became complicated as the contenders had to reverse to go backwards through a gate then continue in the original direction, turn around to negotiate another gate and then backward past the three pylons.
There was an amazing amount of bad driving on display, particularly finding reverse was obviously not a daily habit.
Cars participating ranged from the Subaru WRX. MX5's a Celica 4WD turbo to full standard luxury barges like a BMW 5-series, many Audi 100's, a Volvo 850, a number of Toyota Grande's and even a Hyundai Lantra driven by an elderly woman (see pic 1) that much to the pleasure of the crowds managed her car very efficiently and beat a number of over- enthusiastic boy racers in the process.
I took some pics as of course I had my Leica DBP spycamera with me.
First pic shows a number of the cars, then there is the Toyota Grande in the process of showing a BMW 3-series who is boss, then there is a brandnew Subaru Legacy that was really driven in anger, and finally a visitor in the shape of a Skyline R33GTR showed up, but unfortunately did not participate.
Enjoy