This weekend, the Latvian rally crew of Mārtiņš Seskas and Renars Francis, supported by Latvijas Mobilais Telefons, will start in the Švidnica Rally in Poland, which has been part of the Polish Rally Championship calendar for more than forty years and this year is the first stage of the championship. The asphalt rally will take place from April 22 to 23 in a mountainous area and will be one of the training stages for the Sesks / Francis crew before the upcoming European Rally Championship (ERČ) event in the Canary Islands at the beginning of May.
“We will start the competition with the Škoda Fabia R4 Rally2 Kit prepared by the Lithuanian Proracing team. Our main motivation is to use every opportunity to drive on asphalt. We go anywhere, where there is an opportunity to ride – both sportingly, technically, and financially. It has been a good coincidence that the Świdnica rally is attractive both for the Proracing team, which wants to show the car’s capabilities to the participants of the Polish national championship, and for us as an asphalt rally experience before the upcoming ERC stage in the Canary Islands. Of course, we also have specific training tasks in Švidnica Rally. This is a good competition to test your readiness. We will drive with maximum effort and if we have the necessary abilities and speed at the given moment, we will also fight for a place on the podium,” explains Mārtiņš Sesks about his participation in the Polish championship.
The first chance to see Sesks/Francis in action will be on Saturday morning. Rally participants on April 22 from From 9.00 to 12.00 will be driving a 6.9 km long test stage. At 2:30 p.m., all participants will gather at the Švidnica ice rink to go to the official start of the rally. The organizers have planned four special stages on Saturday afternoon and evening, including two challenging stages along the streets of Švidnica (SS 1 and SS 4 – 3.1 km). The second (12.4 km) and third (8.85 km) stages will take place outside the city.
On Sunday, the athletes have to perform on 3 different stages, each of them three times. The second day of the competition will start with the longest rally stage with a total length of 14.1 km, followed by an 8.45 km long stage and a 12.5 km long stage. The competition will be concluded by a 12.5 km long Power Stage, which will allow the participants of the Polish Championship to score additional points.
