“I would be thankful if you would say that about my driving!” Mārtiņš Sesks quipped to Colin Clark who’d just made a point about how good a talker Sesks is.
The tone was jovial, but perhaps masked a deeper niggle.
Sesks knew that replicating his heroics from Poland and Latvia earlier in the year wasn’t likely. He knew that Chile was going to be a struggle at times. But that doesn’t mean to say it didn’t sometimes frustrate him.
Following a day of opening the road for the others in his non-hybrid Ford Puma Rally1, Sesks arrived at Saturday’s media zone bereft of his usual spark and energy. For a brief moment, the bubble appeared to be bursting.
DirtFish noticed it.
Sesks found Chile far more of a challenge than his previous two Rally1 outings
“Yeah, yeah. You know, it’s this feeling now, like a bit of struggling with myself, you know, trying to find my place – not the pace, but the place,” Sesks replied.
“So yeah… and the feeling is that we could do, I wouldn’t say much faster, but I could be more confident. And it’s like this feeling when you go through at the stage and you’re like ‘that was great’.
“And that’s the thing now going through my mind. I’m just trying to remember and analyze it through already now.”
The sting was undoubtedly taken from Sesks’ weekend when he hit that bank on Friday morning and punctured two of his Pirelli covers, with just one spare sitting in the trunk.
That caused him to miss three stages and ruined any hopes of a noteworthy result, but results are not what Sesks went to Chile for. The whole point was to experience something new to help him learn and become a more-rounded driver.
In that sense, it was very much a mission accomplished.
“Yeah, I think the approach was the biggest thing [I learned],” Sesks told DirtFish.
“Because you know the first two went quite smooth and I was approaching on quite the same preparation and everything. But yeah, going to an unknown rally you have to like pay attention to more details and things like that and that was what caught us off on Friday.
“Then there were these small things which we couldn’t change anymore for Saturday and Sunday, things like pacenotes and stuff. You can improve some things but you cannot make them from scratch.
“I also get the thing about memorizing the stages,” he added. “In fast rallies you can more or less drive by pacenotes and by the feeling but here, if you want to drive fast you have to precisely know what’s coming up next because every corner is different.
“In the faster and wider rallies if you’re making a small mistake you have space, but here there’s no space for some mistakes. So that was the thing. After Friday we just took it careful.”
Sesks learned a lot about how to properly prepare for an event in a Rally1 car last weekend
Asked what he will do better next time to prepare himself, Sesks reiterated: “I think it’s a bit more paying attention to the details and have a bit more detailed notes for these unknown rallies and of course memorizing them like certain places where you are gaining the time.
“It’s like in these twisty or really tricky parts that you just think ahead a bit more. But driving for the first time with Rally1 car on this kind of road where you have these acceleration things and so on, it wasn’t easy.
“From the preparation now I know how it differs. With this car it’s a little bit different from Rally2; the acceleration points and braking points and that changes basically the whole mode of thinking and that’s something we can just learn from driving and experiencing that.”
So as much as Poland and Latvia were vital in putting Sesks on the map, it’s actually Chile – the rally where he was far less impressive – that’ll stand him in much better stead for the future. Sesks learned far more in that one event than he did in the previous two.
The challenge now is to ensure he has that future in a Rally1 car.
“Of course, as always, if there’s an opportunity we will try to take that. But we’ll see what’s going to happen,” Sesks said.
“I think in the next few weeks, maybe months, we will know more.”
