With brand new livery and enormous motivation, Kajetan Kajetanowicz and Maciej Szczepaniak begin their 2023 campaign. On Thursday the ORLEN Rally Team duo start the competition in Rally México – which returns to the World Rally Championship calendar after three years’ break. The Polish crew have already arrived in Mexico, warmly welcomed by passionate motorsport enthusiasts, and started their on optimising their car set-up for very difficult and rough special stages.
Kajetanowicz and Szczepaniak have claimed top-three finishes in past four seasons of the World Rally Championship, competing in WRC2 and WRC3 categories. This year their task is very difficult – with record-breaking competitive field. Almost fifty WRC2 crews took part in two opening rounds of the season.
– We are in Mexico, where the atmosphere is really hot! It’s not just temperature, reaching 30 degrees centigrade – and over 60 degrees inside the car. Starting with our pre-season test, the fans have been very welcoming, sometimes we feel as if we were back in Poland. This kind of atmosphere can be experienced only in few places around the world, they create a unique vibe. The stages of Rally México are also unique: very long, at high altitude, with high temperatures. Plenty of dust and fine fesh-fesh, it can get really slippery. This is a very difficult rally but I am happy that we start our 2023 adventure in Mexico. We competed here in 2020 and we have good memories, although there were some problems on the way. The whole ORLEN Rally Team is motivated ahead of the competition and I will arrive at the start with wide smile on my face
– Kajetan Kajetanowicz, the ORLEN Rally Team driver, said ahead of the rally.
This year’s edition of Rally México consists of 23 special stages, with total length of over 320 kilometres. On Thursday, 16 March, the crews will take part in official shakedown (it starts at 17:01 CET). The competition begins with a city superspecial Street Stage GTO – just over 1.1 kms long – at 3:05 CET. More stages will follow on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.
Starts of Kajetan Kajetanowicz are supported by titular partner of the ORLEN Rally Team – PKN ORLEN, as well as technical partner Delphi Technologies, Pirelli, ATC CARGO S.A., PLATINUM ORLEN OIL brand, QUAZAR LOTOS OIL brand and SJS S.A.
