Rallying is a team sport. The mechanics, the engineers back at the factory, the people who keep the hospitality running, the media personnel, the co-driver – they all play their part in the person behind the wheel chasing first place.
This is not a sport that’s about the individual. But, realistically, Rally Latvia was about just one person.
On the Wednesday night of Latvia’s World Rally Championship debut, that one person was doing the least glamorous thing of all: getting the vacuum cleaner out to give their apartment a once-over. By Sunday he was hoovering up all the plaudits.
Record books will show Mārtiņš Sesks finished seventh on his home event, his second-ever start at the top level of the WRC. What it will also show is how, when battling Ott Tänak for a podium position on the doorstep of his hometown, Liepāja, the entire nation was following every move. Latvia’s public broadcaster LSM produced rolling updates – he was the biggest story on Diena, the grandest of pre-digital legacy publishers in the state of two million citizens.
Kalle Rovanperä led from the first stage to the last. Sébastien Ogier backed him up in second place. After a bit of a wobble at the start of the gravel season, Toyota was back on song. Momentum shifted, the title race tightened up – but, well, so what?
WRC has been entrenched in the established order. Toyota keeps calling on its past master (in volume of appearances, not ability, which has never departed Ogier) because he gets the job of getting big points on the board like no one else – even if this is year three of theoretical semi-retirement from the front line. Thierry Neuville is still chasing title number one after 13 years.
Sesks has been a breath of fresh air – finally, someone shaking up the establishment.
When he pulled into the stop control of the Tukums stage and discovered he’d broken his stage-winning duck, the overwhelming feeling was one of relief. It will probably have been a similar feeling for many of the stakeholders: the rally organizers who’d been part of the backing for his Rally1 effort, WRC Promoter that had put its money into Sesks’ entry. And, quite likely, the Latvian government – the nation’s president Edgars Rinkēvičs was on hand in the service park at one point.
Latvia was gripped with Sesks fever. The global rallying community had come down with the same ailment. But Sesks himself was having none of it.
More than once, stage-end reporters did their duty and tried to draw the Rally1 newcomer into discussing the battles with world champions he was waging. Sesks wouldn’t have it. His fingers would go into his ears, blocking out all the noise – and as a byproduct, ignoring the stakes of what was on the line.
He had to – the pressure of having two rallies to prove you deserve a place at the top level is difficult enough. Having the entire nation follow your every move – the leader of the entire nation included – would turn that pressure up many notches further.
What he managed was impressive. Going toe-to-toe with three world champions from the first stage to the last was beyond expectations. The really impressive bit was that, once his Friday road order advantage was somewhat negated, he was still clocking podium pace regardless.
There is no point in this author summing up Sesks’ rally. Ott Tänak, who’d been battling him for the final place on the podium come Sunday, had already managed to it so effectively: “To Mārtiņš, I must say incredible job he’s done.
“For sure he knows the roads very well, it’s his home country and so on – but nobody can take his driving away. In the end, it’s about driving and whatever the outcome is, the podium on the first time would have been great but it only makes him harder and stronger. Fair play to him, he made us push so he’s had a really great weekend. Everybody in Latvia should be proud.”
That he failed to make the podium is somewhat irrelevant. The point was made.
But just as Sesks did to manage all the external noise, it’s time for us to do the same. Rally Latvia may have been all about Sesks – but that hasn’t suddenly turned him into a world-beater.
Tukums, as much as it created a platform for Sesks to steal the show, also highlighted why he’s not the WRC’s new golden child. Both times he navigated the brief asphalt section that connected the two gravel sections of the stage together, he’d lose nearly a second to his rivals.
He was the local hero. But he isn’t the WRC’s global hero. Not yet. Expectation management is key.
There will be a raft of fans asking when Sesks will next be in one of M-Sport’s Ford Pumas. Hopefully the answer is sometime this year. It would be great to see what he can do on the slower, more technical gravel tests in Greece. Or how he stacks up on asphalt in Central Europe. The answer is likely to be: not as well as on fast gravel. And that’s OK.
How he dealt with the disappointment of losing a possible podium finish on the final stage was telling. He climbed atop his Puma and celebrated with the local fans anyway. For one week, rallying had become the center of Latvia’s attention. Thus, by extension, so had he. Now he has one of the most valuable assets in sport on his side – momentum. It must be used while it’s there. But it will fizzle out eventually.
Next week he’ll go back to his equivalent of a day job: taking on Rally di Roma Capitale in the European championship at the wheel of a Toyota GR Yaris Rally2 – a series where, rather than being the star, he’s been struggling to put a run of results together. From the highs of winning a WRC stage, Sesks will come crashing down to normality again swiftly, his role as the protagonist rewritten into a supporting player trying to establish himself as a potential leading man.
“From wins and good results, you don’t learn as much as from these hard things, let’s say,” Sesks told DirtFish after the finish.
If he gets another chance any time soon, it won’t be on fast gravel. And that means glory days like last weekend will be even less likely. Rallying is a team sport – and that includes us, the fans and followers, accepting that Sesks’ Latvia performance was the perfect coalescence of circumstances that won’t be repeated in the near future.
He’s laid down a marker he can’t meet again soon – it’s up to us all to give him some room to fail before he can grow again and have another run at dominating the front pages again.
