2024-07-17 03:30:17
The stage of the European rally championship organized by Raimonds Strokš was held in Latvia for the first time in 2013, when Mārtiņš Sesks was 13 years old. It was that year that the native of Liepāja held his first competition, participating in the mini-rally Nice-Rucava, and in a conversation with Sporta Avīzi, he says that then his childhood ended.
“At that time, the European Championship still seemed like something very far away, the main thing was to learn to drive a rally car. However, that was the end of my childhood and that’s when my path in rallying began,” says the athlete, who comes from a rally dynasty. His grandfather, also Mārtiņš, organized the first rally on the Liepāja side 59 years ago, his father also drove in the competition. Therefore, Cesk admits that “Tet Rally Latvia” will be special for him and this week is expected to be very emotional.
Sesks made his debut at “Rally Liepāja” in 2016, but in 2022 he made history by winning all the high-speed stages of the home stage, which is a very rare event in a top-level rally. However, he admits that the competition at that time has not remained more vivid in his memory than others. “Each rally is always special with something of its own. Yes, beautiful victories are uplifting, but you learn the most from painful losses. In 2017, we fell over on the first day, but we continued to drive and we also got second place in the junior competition. After this difficult rally, we got to the talks table with “Opel Motorsport”, we concluded a cooperation agreement and drove for one year in the “Opel” factory team.”
When it was understood that Latvia will host the WRC stage in 2024, Raimonds Strokšs, the main organizer of the rally, was the first to show the initiative that he should try to help Mārtiņš Seskas enter the factory team for this competition.
“At this stage, we would have started in any case. We drive a Rally 2 class car every day in the European Championship, but of course, when it became clear about the competition in Latvia, the silent goal was immediately set, because we saw that this was an opportunity to try to break into the factory teams “Raimond had the idea first, he quickly convinced me, and then there were two of us. Next, we had to convince the surrounding team,” Cesk reveals. His father Uldis had the hardest time believing in the possible realization of such a plan. “When you’ve been in the rally circuit all your life and looked at the WRC as something out of reach, but then at one point your son says he’s going to try, it’s hard to believe.”
There has always been an opinion that rallying is a very expensive sport and that in order to get to the elite, the biggest obstacle for our athletes is the lack of finances, Cesk reveals that at the level he is currently at, money no longer plays such a big role and the most difficult thing was not to find financial resources, but to convince the world championship teams, in this case M-Sport Ford, that they need it too. However, the negotiations ended well and even better than expected, as Mārtiņš Sesks made his debut at the wheel of a Rally 1 class car at the end of June in Poland, with a sensational fifth place, using the additional opportunity to prepare for “Tet Rally Latvia”.
“It was quite clear that, taking into account the surrounding hype, if we started only in the Latvian stage, there would be too little time to prepare well. The factory and the WRC organizers also want us all to succeed, and not to be thrown into the world for one week in the elite of the championship and get burned. He had hoped that in 2025 there would be a change in the rules, canceling the hybrid system, and this would probably have allowed him to continue working with M-Sport, testing how the cars work without the hybrid. However, last month it was decided that the rules will not change for the next two years.
“As they usually say, yuk times are the best to break into a system, and we are trying to use them,” the athlete is determined, always naming his main goal at “Tet Rally Latvia” to show his abilities to the factory teams. “Until the Latvian stage with this car we will have covered about 600-700 kilometers, while our teammates have already covered 7000 kilometers this season alone. Therefore, even purely mathematically, it is clear that we in Latvia will need to continue studying. Therefore, the main goal is to get off to a stable start and, thinking about the future, show yourself from the best side – your performance, work abilities, work ethic.”
Thinking about the spectators who have not had experience with the rally before, Mārtiņš Sesks primarily recommends visiting the super special speed stage that will be held on the Biķernieki track on Thursday. “Even here in Riga, you will be able to see world-class rally cars for an hour, and if you like it on Thursday, there will be three more days in which you can go to Tukum, Talsi, Kuldiga, Liepāja. Every day, you will find classic pearls in the competition, you can read about it extensively find out in the viewer’s guide.”
For the full story about Mārtiņš Seskas and Raimonds Strokš’s journey to the WRC stage, as well as reminders that should be taken into account when visiting rally competitions, where safety requirements have grown very rapidly in recent years, read the magazine’s Sports Newspaper in the July issue.
2024-07-17 03:30:17