It’s almost impossible to explain how excited I was when I heard the World Rally Championship was coming back to Poland. Since I was seven years old, this sport is all I’m interested in. Now I work on eWRC-results.com, the best website in the world – DirtFish is number two!
Standing at the side of the road on the Świętajno stage on Saturday morning, we saw first Ott Tänak – he was flying! So fast. Then [Takamoto] Katsuta is coming, followed by Thierry [Neuville]. The sense of exhilaration and pleasure which comes through the crowd we were standing in was incredible. Finally, we are seeing these Rally1 cars coming by.
And then there was nothing. I travelled from my home in Warsaw on Friday night – I was working yesterday – and everybody around was hoping we would see the fourth car. It seems the trouble comes after three and now it came to our stage too.
I am on the event spectating with my two brothers-in-law Tomasz Cieslak and Marcin Kirmuc and our friend Wojtek Abramowicz. Immediately we went to our telephones – like all the fans we are all in WhatsApp groups to relay messages and listen to the organisers and the police about what we should be doing.
Mateusz Zaremba (right) out spectating on Świętajno with brother-in-law Tomasz Cieslak
Where we were standing, the marshals were doing a fantastic job. We were a lot of people, a lot of fans, but true fans here, listening and doing what we were told.
We could understand the problem was in the forest, five kilometres (3.5 miles) into the stage. We were at six kilometres. Immediately 10 of the more experienced fans told the marshals they would go and find out what is going on.
They walked through the forest to the place where the problem was and they found many people who were in the road. They had gone there after the first car. I think this is the problem, the people are a little bit hiding in the forest and when the safety cars go through, they are coming to the road.
The helicopter was above us, but, of course it cannot see beneath the trees. The real spectators, the true fans, moved these other people from the road and made it clear for the stage to run.
It’s difficult, they came back to us and they said there was not a marshal in the trees – and this place was really, really fast.
I have watched this rally every year and I have to say the number of fans is double what we see from the European Rally Championship rounds. In ERC years, it’s really only the home fans who are coming here, but for WRC we see so many more Polish people and then all the spectators are coming from Latvia, Lithuania, Czech Republic – everybody wants to see these Rally1 cars!
Fans camp overnight on stages to get the best spots – which is all for nothing if stages are canceled
I feel sorry for the marshals, they are working hard, trying to do the best job they can. It’s tough for them. The true fans like us, we are also trying to work with them to tell the people around us what we have to do, to stay safe, to not be crazy to keep the stages running.
It’s a small number of people who are spoiling it for us. Maybe we need more marshals, more police, I don’t know. But the problem is in the forests, we can see this.
I am writing this from the campsite where we make the tent for the Sunday stage. We watched on location this morning in the first stage and then we make one more location tomorrow – it’s not possible to do more. The traffic is crazy everywhere, so we just have to be sensible and be happy that we can – hopefully – see the cars twice in this weekend.
If I have one message to all of the fans, it’s please, please listen to the marshals and the police! We have to be safe to enjoy these beautiful cars!
