A BMW i8 super-car for Sergey Karjakin

by Frederic Friedel
4/1/2016 – As you have probably registered by now, Sergey Karjakin won the Candidates Tournament in Moscow, and went home richer by €95,000. But he also received a special prize from the car manufacturer (and Candidates transport sponsor) BMW: the super sports car BMW, a plug-in hybrid that sells at around $140,000 and has a top speed of 250 kmh (= 155 mph). He can use it to cruise the Russian highways.
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The 2016 FIDE World Chess Candidates Tournament was a 14-round event, which determined the next Challenger to Magnus Carlsen's title. It took place in Moscow from March 10–30. Eight players, including six of the World's top-ten rated grandmasters. The prize fund was US $420,000.

A BMW i8 super-car for Sergey Karjakin

BMW Russia was the transportation partner of the tournament and offered special guests of the Candidates the opportunity to use the latest BMW Seven Series cars ("which are progressive, unique and smart") as VIP shuttles. At the closing ceremony the Development Director of the BMW Group in Russia, Hans de Visser, awarded a special prize. This is what he had to say:

Chess is one of the most intellectual games in the world, and our brand, BMW, is known all around the world for our intellectual engineering and our innovations. So for us it is a perfect match. On behalf of BMW Russia I am happy to congratulate Sergey for winning the tournament. For us it was not difficult to find the right award for this great achievement. We thought about driving our most progressive sports car in the world: the BMW i8. So, Sergey, a car that drives up to 250 kilometers an hour, from zero to one hundred in four seconds, carbon fibre body and a fuel consumption of only 2.1 liters for 100 kilometers [translates to 112 miles per gallon]. I think perfect figures. What do you think? [Sergey: "That's my dream"]

You can watch Hans de Visser's speech 47 min 10 sec in the video of the closing ceremony

Read all about the BMW i8 or watch this video. It is a plug-in hybrid sports car with a
7.1 kWh lithium-ion battery pack that delivers an all-electric range of 37 km (23 miles)
using a small amount of gasoline. Sergey can drive the BMW i8 around for a month.

Sergey can now cruise the Russian highways at 250 kmh (= 155 mph)

Incidentally Magnus Carlsen, whom Sergey challenges for the World Championship title in November this year, owns a top-of-the-range electric Tesla car that can match the speed of Sergey's i8. So how about a drag race between the two in Russia or Norway?

Editor-in-Chief emeritus of the ChessBase News page. Studied Philosophy and Linguistics at the University of Hamburg and Oxford, graduating with a thesis on speech act theory and moral language. He started a university career but switched to science journalism, producing documentaries for German TV. In 1986 he co-founded ChessBase.

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