Kajetan Kajetanowicz and Maciej Szczepaniak showed strong performance on the opening loop of Saturday’s leg of Rally Estonia. The LOTOS Rally Team crew set excellent stage times, finishing every test in top three, and gained two places in the WRC-3 standings – grabbing second position in the rally classification!
The day started with the longest test of the whole rally, Peipsiääre 1 (23.53 kms), and Kajetanowicz recorded third-fastest time there. Over the next couple of stages he set second-fastest times on SS11 Mustvee 1 (12.28 kms), SS12 Raanitsa (22.76 kms) and SS13 Vastsemõisa (6.70 kms). This loop went wrong for other frontrunners – Lindholm/Hämäläinen and Kaur/Simm encountered some problems and had to retire from the rally.
– It is really tough but we knew it would be like this, so you cannot say that we are surprised. Interesting thing is that on top of all these huge jumps, taken at high speed, there were some deep ruts. However, we can still maintain our high pace. We moved into second position in our category, so we can be happy. We want to keep good and consistent rhythm but at the same time we have to drive carefully, with maximum focus. The aim is of course to reach the finish line of this extremely difficult rally on Sunday
– says Kajetan Kajetanowicz, the LOTOS Rally Team driver.
The second loop consists of the same set of stages – Peipsiääre (23.56 kms), Mustvee (12.39 kms), Raanista (22.76 kms) and Vastsemõisa (6.72 kms) – with another run of 2-kms Tartu street test at the end.
Starts of Kajetan Kajetanowicz are supported by strategic partner of the LOTOS Rally Team – Grupa LOTOS – as well as Delphi Technologies, Pirelli, SJS Driving Experience and Grupa Sikora.
Rally Estonia 2021 – unofficial WRC-3 results after SS13:
- Lukyanuk/Fedorov (Russia, Škoda Fabia Rally2 evo) 1:47:36.8 s
- Kajetanowicz/Szczepaniak (Poland, Škoda Fabia Rally2 evo) +1:30.2 s
- Heikkilä/Luhtinen (Finland, Škoda Fabia Rally2 evo) +3:03.3 s
- López/Odriozola (Spain, Škoda Fabia Rally2 evo) +3:26.3 s
- Jeets/Toom (Estonia, Škoda Fabia Rally2 evo) +4:56.3 s
- Jurkevičius/Paliukènas (Lithuania, Škoda Fabia Rally2 evo) +6:24.6 s
- Zaldivar/del Barrio (Paraguay/Spain, Škoda Fabia Rally2 evo) +7:36.7 s
- Fernández/Garcia (Chile/Argentina, Škoda Fabia Rally2 evo) +9:41.1 s
- Díaz-Aboitiz/Sanjuan de Eusebio (Spain, Škoda Fabia Rally2 evo) +21:21.2 s
- Al-Rashed/Haapala (Saudi Arabia/Finland, Volkswagen Polo GTI R5) +56:35.5 s
