Kajetan Kajetanowicz and Maciej Szczepaniak scored another haul of points for the championship standings in South America. The ORLEN Rally Team crew drivers finished Rally Chile in top five in the WRC2 Challenger category.
South America, full of rally passion, once again hosted two rounds of the World Rally Championship after a few years’ break. First, the WRC visited Paraguay for the first time and then the battle for top honours continued in Chile – on very demanding, diverse and tyre-eating gravel roads, already familiar to the frontrunners.
This was sixth appearance for Kajetanowicz and Szczepaniak in their 2025 campaign. Right from the first kilometres the Polish duo battled it out against top WRC2 Challenger crews. Successfully defending their top-three position, they showed strong and consistent pace, keeping their rivals at bay. Once they closed the gap, the ORLEN Rally Team crew responded and added extra seconds to their advantage. Everything went according to the plan until the final stage on Saturday. A seemingly harmless contact with a bank in one of the corners resulted in suspension damage – bent against a hidden rock. The crew had to continue at careful pace for another dozen or so kilometres, losing time and dropping to sixth position in their category. The plan for Sunday was to gain at least one place and they successfully achieved that. Kajetanowicz and Szczepaniak advanced into the top five in the WRC2 Challenger category already in the morning and maintained that position until the finish line, scoring precious points in the overall season standings.
Fans could follow the struggles of Rally Chile on my social media channels, among other places, and we were doing our part every day. Today we fulfilled our plan for Sunday – we gained one position. That was all we could do because yesterday’s loss was too big. However, I am glad we came here. We definitely learned a lot and experienced a wonderful atmosphere. The people of South America, both in Paraguay and Chile, have enormous passion and big hearts. Their incredible energy was with us all the time and we were able to use it. I think some people in Europe could learn a lot from the local fans when it comes to supporting athletes and their idols. Rally Chile was very difficult. Although we expected it, I must admit that it was, even by the World Rally Championship standards, exceptionally demanding. I want to thank the entire ORLEN Rally Team and Rallylab Technology, Owen – my engineer, and of course Maciek. We all did our best. We had some bad luck, a few things were missing and a few things we could not influence a lot worked against us. It is great to be at the finish line. A fight for the podium was for sure possible and in fact we were in top three until yesterday but that’s how rallies are. This situation is certainly encouraging for us and we will take positive lessons for the future. Now we are coming back home, we have been away for almost four weeks. We miss our loved ones but at the same time we are already thinking about our next rally
– Kajetan Kajetanowicz, triple European Rally Champion, commented after Rally Chile.
The ORLEN Rally Team is now returning to Poland and will have a chance to perform in front of their home crowd. First, during Rally Silesia, which takes place at the end of the coming week, and then during Rally Ustroń – an annual automotive festival held in the hometown of Kajetanowicz.
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.
Rally Chile 2025 – unofficial WRC2 Challenger classification:
- Gryazin/Aleksandrov (Škoda Fabia RS Rally2) 3:04:41,1
- Solans/Sanjuan (Toyota GR Yaris Rally2) +1:07,4
- J. Martínez/García (Škoda Fabia RS Rally2) +3:28,6
- F. Zaldivar/Der Ohannesian (Škoda Fabia RS Rally2) +3:30,1
- Kajetanowicz/Szczepaniak (Toyota GR Yaris Rally2) +7:56,1
- G. Rosselot/Brizio (Citroën C3 Rally2) +8:11,2
- Scuncio/Román (Škoda Fabia Rally2 evo) +12:09,2
- E. Rosselot/Leiva (Citroën C3 Rally2) +16:12,8
- Galanti/Toyotoshi (Toyota GR Yaris Rally2) +16:13,0
- P. Heller/Amestica (Citroën C3 Rally2) +20:50,7
