Egor Laryushin is a 17-year-old Russian karting driver currently competing in the Sodi World Series. He started in rental karting, joined Sergei Sirotkin’s academy in 2021, and competed in his Sodi-Rotax Championship. In 2022, he was promoted to professional karting in the form of Rotax-Max. However, he struggled to find financial support and had some heart problems, which didn’t let him compete in the Russian Rotax-Max Championship. He moved to Austria that same year, where he was about to join a team competing in Central European Karting. However, the financial aspect did sadly stop him from progressing again. This all led him to participate in the Sodi World Series, which he has been doing since 2024.
Enrique: Hello Egor, how are you feeling?
Laryushin: Yeah, I’m feeling great, thank you for inviting me. It’s a pleasure.
E: So, how have you seen the season so far?
L: It started quite interestingly, because in the first race, I happened to find my first actual team in the Sodi World Series. In the last season, I had my own team with my friend in the Czech Republic. We’ve got our own team, but it isn’t very serious. We competed in only one race, and it wasn’t great. Not that promising either, probably.
So, I found my first real team, with which I competed in a 24-Hour race, also in the Czech Republic, in Modřice. I’ve gotten some plastic cups from those races, because I did win a couple of times, but I’d say it was the worst category, because it was my first time on the circuit and so on. I’ve also raced in the first ever long endurance race in Austria, conducted on the 1st of May.
It was called the 10 Hours of Kleinbach, and it went particularly bad. Our team wasn’t ready at all. One of my colleagues had only started pursuing karting, and his first real race was the 10 Hours. This didn’t give us an advantage, especially in the rain, when he had to drive. Meanwhile, I was trying to compete with the leaders and was within the same lap time. Then, we switched to this guy, and suddenly we started going 15 seconds slower by lap.
So, I couldn’t bring home anything. The most usual category of races in the Sodi World Series, however, is a sprint, with 10, 12, or maybe 15 laps in a single race. They’ve been all right, I would say, because I’m participating on mostly new tracks, or on tracks I haven’t been on for a long time. We are good enough to be in the mix, to be, at least, in the middle group, starting right for the qualifying and the race. So here we are.
E: You’re here now, but how did you get into karting? What encouraged you to begin?
L: It was probably my father. Of course, I’ve also watched the “Cars” movies, and Lightning McQueen has also encouraged me. But it was especially my father who did, since he’s been watching Formula 1 since 1992. We’ve had F1 races on our television almost every Sunday. And one day, I just told him, “I want to be there, so let’s try and achieve the dream”.
I did start with rental karts, because it is hard to buy them. It is quite expensive; I’ve got to admit, especially if you’re only starting. As I started pursuing karting, COVID-19 did just hit. That was also kind of a barrier to improve in the first stages. But I would say I was all right at rental karting, at least.
E: Who does your dad support, by the way?
L: He’s been a Ferrari fan for ages already. He was a big Michael Schumacher fan. He also supported Vettel back in the day, when he drove for Ferrari. Massa as well. But now, he does also like Hülkenberg. I’d say Ferrari and German drivers. He also talked a lot about Nick Heidfeld, whom he also supported in the past.
E: And who have you supported throughout the years? When did you start watching F1?
L: It’s hard to pinpoint when I started watching F1, because I could have done it not very consciously… I remember watching a race in Baku, for example, and I remember Checo Pérez standing on the podium, so it was probably 2017 or 2015. I can’t say that I rooted for him, since I did only start to seriously watch Formula 1 around the same time I started pursuing karting.
It was around the start of COVID-19 in 2020. I was also very passionate about my favourite driver, Antonio Giovinazzi, at that time. It is hard to explain why, it just happens. You see him struggling in that Alfa Romeo and you have some empathy for him.
He was really underrated, especially during his 2021 season, where I would say Alfa just started sabotaging him… When this deal with Zhou emerged on the side with those 20 million euros for the 2022 season, they just started sabotaging Giovinazzi to get a reason to fire him. He was greatly underrated. I can talk for hours about how he missed great opportunities to score some good points or even podiums in 2021. And I’m not going crazy. It was for real.
E: In Hungary 2021 he could have actually won… I’m not calling it a sabotage, but it was bad strategy.
L: Yeah, it was a stupid mistake. He was the only one who started on slicks and then they put him on the inters. I think he would have definitely been in the place of Ocon, at least at the beginning of the race. Then, who knows? Ocon and Vettel… Their cars weren’t much better. So, I think he could have at least caught up to them.
E: Honestly, that Alfa, and especially that Aston was better at that point, I would say, in 2021. But, after that year Giovinazzi went to Formula E, then he went to the World Endurance Championship (WEC)… Who did you root for in F1?
L: I was struggling to find a new favourite driver. I mean, I was still kind of supporting Sauber/Alfa Romeo, or Haas, because they’re backmarkers, they’re the underdogs. And it’s always funny, at least, to see, for example, Kevin Magnussen in P5 in Bahrain or on pole in Brazil.
It has always been a great joy to see such underdogs succeeding. I think I like Williams as well, but I preferred Haas and Alfa, since they have less resources and less media attention. They were the real underdogs at the time.
E: We’re not leaving F1 just yet, because you did drive for Sergey Sirotkin’s academy. How did that happen?
L: I mean, we just found an offering in this championship, which he organized with his academy. We decided to try to compete in that, because it would probably be an important step in competing with other professional or, at least semi-professional, drivers on quite a good level, I would say. Although it was still on the rental kart basis, it was a Sodi kart, although it had the Vortex engine.
So, it was a kind of great kart, but we just found that offering. And in order to prepare for this tournament, we also started to visit his regular trainings in some karting tracks near Moscow. I stayed after the tournament. I was even given the “Progress of the Year” Award, because I was starting the championship as a newcomer, pretty much. I only just joined the academy and didn’t have much experience.
And in my last two races, I was pretty much fighting for podiums in the junior category, in which I was racing. In the last race, I even clinched the podium by overtaking the championship leader on the last lap, which cost him the championship.
He wasn’t especially happy with that. I wanted to shake hands with him, but he was quite angry actually at the end of the race, because he lost his championship in that corner.
E: You did a bit of a reverse Timo Glock?
L: (laughs) Yeah, probably.
E: And have you met Sirotkin himself in person?
L: Yes, he attended quite a lot of trainings. And he was always there during the races. We’ve had some contact with him. I’ve even managed to race with him a couple of times, as part of the training. When we did the race, he started last. And the other guys, they were allowed to qualify themselves. And I was, of course, starting in the front row, because he was starting last. So, we didn’t even fight with each other. He couldn’t even catch up.
E: I mean, technically you’ve faced an F1 driver. So that’s a pretty big accomplishment in itself. But apart from him, who would you say is the best driver you’ve ever raced against? What about Artem Severiukhin. You raced against him, right?
L: Yeah, I’ve been on the same track with him. He was on some testing group for the Vortex Max. I mean, he was already banned from the European Karting Championship at that time. But he could at least do the test sessions in order to come back. And I think he has returned.
E: He’s in Italian F4 now.
L: I’ve also competed against some drivers who raced in Spanish Formula 4. For example, Oleksandr Bondarev. He didn’t do especially well, I think. We were pretty much on the same level as we competed in Sirotkin’s Academy. But he obviously had more sponsorships.
And now I think he’s racing in the Russian Endurance Championship. So yeah, there are a lot of actually successful cases from the Sirotkins Academy who have stepped not only just to the level of the Russian Karting Championship, but also to formula cars in Formula 4. Not Formula 3, not FRECA… But Formula 4 has been the step to achieve, at least.
E: And would you say that the drivers you’ve mentioned so far are the best you’ve ever raced against?
L: They might be. There are also some other, more experienced, drivers who I’ve raced against, who raced in GTs mostly, or even rallycross, I think. It’s kind of hard to compare them to the youngsters in Spanish Formula 4. But we can say that this level was probably achievable.
E: What would you say is your biggest achievement so far?
L: My biggest achievement so far, to keep it banal, I would say that I’ve not given up, that I’m still doing karting. It’s my greatest achievement because after the doors were shut because of financial and health-related problems, it was hard not to give up. And now I’ve managed to redefine my own career. It’s not dreadful. We can call it promising at some specific level.
E: Do you think you can make a career of it?
L: I hope so. I could probably race in GT, maybe in rallying, because I do have some connections with those Czech guys. They’re competing in rallies, and if we find sponsors… We were actually planning to even try to compete in the European Rally Championship, at least in the Czech race, as wild card drivers, a couple of years. But it comes down to the biggest and most important point: the money. If I had that, it would be possible.
E: That’s your biggest achievement; I have to agree. But what about your biggest achievement on track? What’s the best race you’ve ever done, one you’re really proud of?
L: I can be proud of some of them. A lot of races which I won, were actually won by strategy. Because sometimes, in karting, when you drive a race with a pit stop, there is a pretty simple and, frankly, underrated strategy, especially in warm conditions.
You just pit early, as early as possible. This decision has won me, from memory, at least three races. I just started in the leading group, and I was fighting the whole time during the first five or four laps, before the pit window opened. Then, I just jumped in the pit stop immediately, switched the kart, rejoined the track in the completely free air, and drove my best laps, whilst the other leaders were fighting against each other, losing a great amount of time.
Once, there was a race, that I didn’t even know that I won. I was so far in front of them that I thought I was behind them. It was like more than a half of a lap. They lost so much time while competing with each other.
E: What year was this race in?
L: It was in 2022, with Sergey Sirotkin’s academy. The race was around 35 laps, so it was a little bit longer than a sprint. Great race, since I won.
E: So, this was before leaving Russia?
L: It was still in Russia, yes.
E: In 2022, at 14 years of age, you moved from Russia to Turkey, and then from Turkey to Austria.
L: That’s right, but I couldn’t stay in Turkey for a long period of time. I think it’s because we didn’t have any property. We had to go back to Russia and prepare all the documents to move to Austria. This lasted like half a year. During this time, I was still doing karting in Russia, with Sirotkin’s academy, and this was the last month there.
E: Do you still keep in contact with Sirotkin?
L: Not anymore, no. I did want to try and catch up with him, in order to do an interview for my high school. I had to do my final project there, which was about the aerodynamics of racing cars.
He is known for his technical knowledge. Sirotkin was test driver at Renault because he understood the car: he could help in the setup of some specific tracks. I think that’s one of his best aspects, as a driver.
E: What are you studying right now? You’re finishing school, but then, what are you planning to do for college or university?
L: I’m still not sure. I would like to study something like journalism. Maybe TV science, or something like that. Maybe even film and theatre science. I think that way because physics hasn’t gone especially well in my high school.
Our high school physics teacher is a menace. No one understands what he’s saying. All those possible dreams of studying physics and possibly becoming a Formula 1 engineer, they’re getting further and further away from me with every one of his high school lessons right now.
E: But just because there’s a specific subject in high school that you don’t like? That doesn’t mean you can’t pursue physics for college or for uni.
L: Yes, probably, but I think then what becomes a problem is the lack of knowledge. Either I start studying physics right now, and cover up all those problematic aspects, all those topics which I haven’t managed to learn under that specific teacher, or I try to find some other thing which could interest me the same, or even more, and pursue that.
Physics is not the only way; it’s not a fantasy. I just might have to think about it again, if it’s worth it or not. Maybe it is, I just have to rethink the whole situation. I still have a bit of time to do that, around half a year.
E: So, the reason why you’d study physics is to one day get into Formula 1?
L: Yes, I would say so. It would be a dream job to study physics. If I eventually get into Formula 1, it will make the whole studying process worth it. Even getting into IndyCar would be worth it, since I would like to work for a racing team.
E: In Formula 1, right now, we’ve obviously got the elephant in the room: the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix this weekend with a 3-way fight between Lando Norris, Max Verstappen and Oscar Piastri for the title. It’s also the last race for Yuki Tsunoda, which is sad. But who do you think is going to win, between Lando, Max and Oscar?
L: Even if I don’t really want Lando to win the championship, I think he is still the biggest favourite. I think there is around a 70% or 75% chance that Norris is going to win. The gap between him and Verstappen is just too big. I mean, it is obviously possible that McLaren will screw up another time with their strategy or it will just be a bad race for Lando. But I don’t think he will have a bad race in Abu Dhabi, since it’s the title decider. I don’t think he will let himself be two tenths slower than Oscar, like in Qatar, for example.
Lando is probably not giving the title away. It might be possible that he finishes second or even third with Max or Piastri winning. If, for example, Verstappen finishes second and Norris is only third… Would fourth be enough?
E: No.
L: Yeah, so a P3 is more than possible. It would have been a 10 points gap between Max and Lando if Andrea Kimi Antonelli hadn’t oversteered in that corner in Qatar. Then it would have been a 50% chance for him, probably. A third place for Norris is more than possible in Abu Dhabi. For a P4, then something should happen, I would say. So, my money’s on Norris, even though I want Piastri or Verstappen to win.
E: We’ll have to wait until after Abu Dhabi. By the way, there’s also been this big discussion recently, especially with this circuit and with Lusail, about the quality of the tracks. What would you say is the racetrack you would most like to race on in the future?
L: Spa-Francorchamps. Or, maybe, Suzuka. I think the latter offers the complete experience of a racetrack and it would be very fun to drive it in any sort of machinery. In a GT, in a Super Formula, or maybe in a Formula 1 car… Anything. I think it would be a really fun, but also very challenging experience. Especially in the first sector, with all those S-corners. I also have to mention Spa, because it’s just a legendary circuit.
E: You mentioned Formula 1… Obviously that’s very far away, but if they gave you an F1 test drive and you had to choose one car to race, which one would it be, out of all of the cars in history?
L: I think I would take the Mercedes W11 because it would be the hardest one to crash without any preparation, because it was just so stable. It steered very well. The DAS wasn’t disallowed in 2020, I think, and so it made the steering and racing experience even more comfortable for both drivers.
Sometimes, when you watch the onboard of Lewis Hamilton, Valtteri Bottas, or even George Russell in the 2020 Sakhir Grand Prix, it feels like they’re driving with climate control. This car is just so steady. I’m sure it is one of the best to drive.
E: It’s one of the best F1 cars ever, if not the best. And when we’re looking at the future for you, karting-wise, what do you see yourself doing next year?
L: In 2026, I think I’m most likely staying in pretty much the same position. Maybe I’ll find another team and compete in other endurance races, in other countries. I don’t know, because right now I’m mostly connected to Czech Republic, although I live in Austria.
Maybe I will find something in other neighbouring countries like Hungary, Italy… I don’t know. I don’t think that there is a great change, at least for next year. Right now, it’s hard to imagine.
You can listen to the interview here:
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