Kajetan Kajetanowicz and Maciej Szczepaniak return to action during Rally del Paraguay. Round ten of the 2025 World Rally Championship takes top rally crews to a previously unvisited region of South America.
The ORLEN Rally Team reached their halfway point of this year’s World Rally Championship campaign at the end of June. Kajetanowicz and Szczepaniak have contested four out of seven events in their schedule at the top level. They scored points in the WRC2 Challenger standings in Kenya, Portugal, Sardegna and Greece, getting to know their new rally car – Toyota GR Yaris Rally2 – with every kilometre of special stages. They did exceptionally good job in two latter events, claiming second position in the Mediterranean island, just six seconds behind the winners, and winning the “Rally of Gods” in Greece. Accumulated points give them third position in the WRC2 Challenger standings.
In less than four weeks’ time Kajetanowicz and Szczepaniak will take part in Rally del Paraguay, a new fixture in this year’s WRC calendar. This South American country is famous for yerba mate, hydroelectric power plants (all of Paraguay’s electricity is generated by hydropower) and capybaras – friendly large rodents. Now Paraguay becomes the 38th country hosting a WRC championship round.
Following our rally marathon in May and June, when we completed Rally de Portugal, Rally Italia Sardegna and Acropolis Rally Greece – winning this event in the WRC2 Challenger category – we enjoyed a short break. However, it was long enough to make us hungry for driving again. Now it’s time for another huge challenge. Rally del Paraguay is a brand new World Rally Championship round, an unknown event basically for everyone. There is little information about this rally so we have to expect the unexpected. We know that difficulty level of the stages raises dramatically when it rains. Road surface gets very slippery, mud sticks to tyre thread and you can become a passenger very quickly. However, we enjoy challenges and, as always, we approach this rally with ambition, having already started our preparations. We have plenty of fans in South America and we are counting on their support. I also hope for support from Europe, especially from Poland. We are looking forward to this event
– Kajetan Kajetanowicz, the 2023 WRC2 Challenger champion, commented ahead of the rally.
Rally del Paraguay takes place on 28-31 August. The event is based in Encarnación, a city in south-east of the country, close to Argentinian border. Rally schedule consists of nineteen special stages, covered with distinctive red gravel, spreading mostly along the Paraná River – second-longest in South America. There will be 335 competitive kilometres to complete.
Starts of Kajetan Kajetanowicz are supported by the title partner of the ORLEN Rally Team – ORLEN S.A., as well as technical partner Delphi and ORLEN OIL.
