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Latvian rally driver Mārtiņš Sesks and co-driver Renārs Francis on Saturday at the World Rally Championship (WRC) In the Sardinian stage, they won the junior class in five stages, leading to the third place overall.
It has already been reported that on Friday, in the fourth stage of the junior class leader Seska, there were problems with the drive shaft, due to which the pilot was forced to withdraw from the first day of the race.
Seska’s crew did not start in two special stages on Friday, for which they received a penalty of about 20 minutes.
On Saturday, the athlete managed to improve his performance, as well as technical problems were solved right on the track. The ferret won the mates in five of the six stages, but in the tenth “dopa” he finished in sixth place.
The demonstrated performance allowed Seska’s crew to climb to the third position in the junior classification. They lose more than half an hour to leader Tom Christenson of Sweden, but the second place is more than 20 minutes away.
In the JWRC class, all athletes start with Ford Fiesta vehicles.
In the overall classification, Sesks is in 38th place among 55 riders. The leader of the race after 12 stages is the Spaniard Dani Sordo, but the Frenchman Sebastian Ogie is less than half a minute away.
On Sunday, four more stages ahead of the pilots.
In the first stage of the season JWRC, Sesks and Francis in Sweden won the second place, conceding only to Tom Christenson, but in the second stage in Estonia they took Latvia’s first victory in this class. This year’s stage of the World Junior Championship is also planned in Belgium (November 19-22).
Last year, Sesk had a debut year driving a Ford Fiesta R2 car in the World Junior Championships. In JWRC class in 25 stages Seska’s crew managed to finish in the top three, in the stages they won three rallies.
In the overall standings of the World Championship, the leader after five stages is Elfin Evans (“Toyota”), who has accumulated 97 points, Ojje (“Toyota”) is 18 points less, and the Estonian top ten (70) is closed by Estonian Ots Tenaks (“Hyundai”). Kallem Rovanper from Finland (“Toyota”), the two-time Latvian two-time champion from Finland, has the same score.
There are currently three more stages in the calendar.
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