Less than three weeks after their impressive victory in legendary Safari Rally Kenya, Kajetan Kajetanowicz and Maciej Szczepaniak contest another World Rally Championship round! It’s time for Rally Estonia, one of the fastest and most spectacular events in the calendar. The LOTOS Rally Team driver will defend the first position in the WRC2 standings on special stages packed with thousands of rally fans!
Kajetanowicz is the man to beat this year. After historic win in Safari Rally, the Polish driver leads the 2022 standings in his category. His excellent streak started with podium finishes in Croatia and Portugal – he also knows how to fight for success in Estonia. He grabbed top-three finishes here in 2021, 2016 and 2015.
This year we got used to plenty of very strong names in the field – and Estonia follows the suit with the likes of Teemu Suninen, Andreas Mikkelsen or Hayden Paddon, who have been competing for many seasons in top WRC category. They will be joined by Finnish drivers Emil Lindholm and Jari Huttunen, always fast on these type of roads. Egon Kaur, local driver with great knowledge of his home stages, will be in the fight as well. The whole WRC2 field consists of nineteen crews.
– From the legendary route of Safari Rally we move to the land of beautiful lakes and vast forests – but above all this place is famous for speed and long jumps. Now it’s time for Rally Estonia, I have some experience and good memories from here – but I always stress that every round in the World Championship means a completely new chapter. Maximum precision and concentration are required on these stages, when you drive flat-out almost all the time. Otherwise, our rivals – who are really strong here – will take advantage of the smallest mistake on our part. We arrive in Estonia as the championship leaders in our category but this is not a burden – it means an extra motivation to work even harder than before. Two days of testing helped us to switch to a completely different characteristics of the stages but this is not the end of our preparations. As usual, the organisers have prepared a couple of surprises for us, so we need to do our homework properly during the recce – and use our pace notes wisely. Keep your fingers crossed!
– says Kajetan Kajetanowicz, the LOTOS Rally Team driver.
The rally starts on Thursday (14 July) with a short, 1.66-kms ERM stage. High speeds and long jumps await the competitors on Friday – with two runs of Peipisääre (24.35 kms), Mustvee (17.09 kms), Raanista (21.45 kms) and Vastsemõisa (7.60 kms) stages. On Saturday the crews will tackle two loops, consisting of Elva (11.73 kms), Mäeküla (10.27 kms), Otepää (17.08 kms) and Neeruti (7.79 kms) tests, returning also to Thursday’s ERM stage (1.66 kms). Sunday will present an extremely difficult challenge, with Raadi (6.58 kms), Kanepi (16.48 kms) and Kambja (15.95 kms) stages – without any service break before second loop. In total, the competitors face 313.26 competitive kilometres.
Starts of Kajetan Kajetanowicz are supported by strategic partner of the LOTOS Rally Team – Grupa LOTOS, technical partner Delphi Technologies, as well as Pirelli, SJS Driving Experience and Grupa Sikora.
Current WRC2 drivers’ standings:
- Kajetan Kajetanowicz (66 points)
- Yohan Rossel (63)
- Nikolay Gryazin (52)
- Andreas Mikkelsen (51)
- Chris Ingram (44)
- Jari Huttunen (33)
- Sean Johnston (32)
- Erik Cais (22)
- Emil Lindholm (21)
- Jan Solans (19)
