Mãrtiņş Sesks isn’t chasing headline results as he heads into the first of five consecutive World Rally Championship rounds this week with M-Sport.
Instead, his priority is experience of events as he seeks to ready himself to be a podium contender in the future.
The 25-year-old Latvian has a six-round program in place behind the wheel of a Ford Puma Rally1 this year, which began with a sixth-place finish at February’s Rally Sweden.
Rally Portugal marks Sesks’ return, and is the first in a successive sequence of gravel events (Sardinia, Acropolis, Estonia and Finland) that he’ll tackle.
“I’ve never done so many WRC events in a sequence, so it will be interesting,” Sesks told DirtFish. “But I think we have a good team around us, and they’ll guide us and help as much as they can.
“For us, it’s the experience for the future that counts at the moment, not really some kind of results. Our approach hasn’t changed, for example, from Sweden.”
Sweden was a strong start to Sesks' half-season
Sesks built his confidence, and pace, throughout Rally Sweden to finish as the lead M-Sport Puma.
“I think we did great,” he added, “and if we can keep continuing like that it will just benefit all of us.”
Sesks believes his priority has to be gaining experience because he’s already proved his speed last year in Poland and Latvia, but he won’t be able to fight at the front of the WRC in future years without a solid understanding of the events.
“I think in the long term I will benefit from this more if I finish the rally, do all the stages and then we can focus on some of the podiums when I’m doing the rally for the second or third time,” he explained.
“Now in the summer time I will be like a full-time rally driver, so I won’t have any extra time for preparing any additional rallies [like we have for Portugal]. If it would be the case like last year, we did two rallies and then Chile when we had a month in between of course I can prepare more. But then again there is this difference in my experience.
“For example, I’ve been in Portugal and Sardinia in Junior [WRC], so more or less I know what happens there. But for example, Greece, I’ve never done the rally. So for me, it does really change the approach.
“Of course, if I had experience of five years in WRC, and I’m doing this half a season, and my job is to push in each of the rallies, then of course it gives you some kind of benefit [not doing a full season]. But yeah, I won’t see it as that at the moment. It’s just the experience that counts.”
Experience means learning the Rally1 car, but the real focus for Sesks is learning the rallies.
“Definitely,” he said. “For myself, I think that experience of rallies counts much more than the car. Because I think with the car, you can familiarize faster than doing the rally, because the rally you’re doing once a year. But for the car, you can get in the car more than once a year.”
Sesks’ plan remains to get out to Rally Saudi Arabia at the end of the year – an event that would be brand-new for everyone – but nothing is confirmed yet.
“We are still in the same position and working on that and planning on that – hopefully we’ll get there,” he said.
“The knowledge of the stages and the roads most of the other guys have is just incredible, but when everybody’s doing the stage for the first time, that’s a bit different.”
