Kajetan Kajetanowicz and Maciej Szczepaniak are facing their last start in the 2025 World Rally Championship season. The ORLEN Rally Team duo will compete against top rivals on the sandy gravel stages in Saudi Arabia.
The only Polish crew with regular campaign in the world’s most important rally series started the season 250 days ago. At the beginning Kajetanowicz and Szczepaniak tackled the famously difficult Safari and continued their quest for success in Portugal, Sardinia, Greece, Paraguay and Chile. Now the ORLEN Rally Team end their 2025 campaign in Saudi Arabia.
The largest country in the Middle East makes its first appearance in the World Rally Championship calendar, joining another this year’s newcomers: the Canary Islands and Paraguay. The final round of the 2025 season is based in Jeddah – known as the pearl of the Red Sea and famous among the motorsport fans thanks to hosting Formula 1 races and the Dakar Rally.
The ORLEN Rally Team arrived in Saudi Arabia a few days ago and completed a quick acclimatisation, mainly to hot conditions – with temperatures almost 40 degrees Celsius higher than those currently recorded in Poland. On Saturday Kajetanowicz and Szczepaniak took part in a test session, gaining their first experience with local stages. They focused particularly on working on the suspension setup, searching for the most versatile solutions for both hard gravel and deep, soft sand.
We are preparing for the final round of the WRC season, held in Saudi Arabia. We have completed our pre-event test, getting to know the local surface. I can compare it to special stages in Greece and, in some places, even to Safari. However, most things are new to us and we will also hit some desert sections. The heat will be an additional challenge. We already experience 35 degrees Celsius in the shade, so it is a huge difference compared to current temperature in my beloved Ustroń, in southern Poland. We are used to competing in such conditions, though. The last Acropolis Rally in Greece was equally hot, if not hotter. On the other hand, there will be more challenges here. Some of them we can definitely handle, others are a big unknown, so we are waiting to see how things develop. We will definitely do our best and I just cannot wait. The season passed by – or rather drove by – very quickly and I am a little sad about that, but we are definitely going to enjoy this showdown, at the same time starting to prepare ourselves mentally for the next challenges. I hope you will keep your fingers crossed for our performance in Saudi Arabia – just as you have been doing all year long. And remember – here the competition starts earlier, on Wednesday
– said Kajetan Kajetanowicz, triple European Rally Champion.
On Sunday the Polish duo started the recce, which will last until Tuesday. The official shakedown is scheduled for Wednesday and a few hours later the starting ceremony will take place. Afterwards the crews will tackle a short super-special. Proper competition on the gravel roads of Saudi Arabia will begin on Thursday morning. A total of nearly 320 competitive kilometres will be covered – divided into seventeen special stages.
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.
