These days during the Autosport International exhibition in Britain the SIN R1 car was welcomed with great interest. It is a Bulgarian-British project whose creator and owner is Rossen Daskalov from the Danube city of Ruse. The idea for the car was born spontaneously. Some 4 years ago Rosen went to England to buy a car for his participation in the Bulgarian championship. However, he could not find anything to satisfy his requirements for price and quality. That is why he decided to fill the gap. When the design was ready, he decided to show it nowhere else but in England - the home of motorsport. It turned out that not everything was perfect but Rosen is one of those people for whom life means development. He listened to the advice of people from the industry and the vehicle went through a number of changes. In England he found supporters who helped him in the search for perfection.

More from the author of the project:

"The car has been developing in two directions", Rossen Daskalov explains. "One is a street version with a 450hp engine by General Motors, with a manual six-speed manual gearbox of a European manufacturer. The design of the suspension, chassis, the carbon and other elements has been developed by our team together with our British partners. There is also a racing version of the car. In the past two years we have been testing it in the British GT Championship, where we proved that our car is at the same level as that of Ferrari, McLaren, Porsche, Lamborghini that have decades of experience behind them."

What makes the Bulgarian-British project different from the rest?

"I am a racer and I do not like cars with front-mounted engines that are too heavy to the front and more difficult to manage. This is typical for BMW cars. In our car, which is a typical GT car of the highest class, the engine is centrally mounted together with the gearbox. Mass distribution is 40:60 percent (front/rear axle), which is the best. For example, in Porsche cars, the ratio reaches 25:75%, since its engine and gearbox are situated in the back.”

The car is something of a "confessed sin" of its creators, who spent many hours working on the project instead of being with their families.

Vladimir Iliev, a former racer, now a lecturer in the National Academy of Sports in Sofia, is the man who gives courage and developed a strategy for participation of the car in the European GT Championship of the International Automobile Federation. The championship takes place in 6 different countries over a period of 6 weekends. The fee for participation in the championship this year is quite large - € 60,000. However, the team of Daskalov is determined to achieve the goal without help from the state.

"We want to show that something good can happen and the name of Bulgaria can be heard in a different context than usual. You know about the speculations regarding Bulgarians and their place on the labor market, especially in England,” Rossen Daskalov further says. “Many of our compatriots, who visited the fair, found out that we are Bulgarians only because of the Bulgarian brand of chocolates we were giving to the guests. Nothing else hinted that this project was implemented by Bulgarians."

Now the team of Rossen that includes 25 young enthusiasts wants to prove that the project for the European GT4 series can be implemented entirely by Bulgarians. Four Bulgarian pilots are now wanted. We could do it with pilots from other countries, but only if we failed to find ones in Bulgaria," Rossen Daskalov says in conclusion.

English: Alexander Markov

Photos: private archive of Rossen Daskalov