M-Sport is treating Martins Sesks’ Rally Chile outing as an “extended audition” in the World Rally Championship as the Ford team continues to assess the young driver’s skills for the future.
Rising star Sesks and co-driver Renars Francis have earned a third outing in Ford Puma Rally1 this year following impressive displays to finish fifth and seventh respectively in Poland and Latvia rounds earlier this year.
The opportunity to pilot a non-hybrid powered Puma in Chile has been made possible thanks to further support from the WRC Promoter that helped fund the Latvians’ last two Rally1 appearances.
Sesks’ reputation as a future talent has been enhanced by scoring maiden stage wins in Latvia on his way to challenging for a likely third-place finish before a mechanical issue struck his Puma on the final stage.
The 25-year-old’s performance has impressed M-Sport enough to emerge as a possible candidate for more drives in the future as the team weighs up its options for 2025.
Team principal Richard Millener is keen to see how Sesks will perform in Chile, a rally that will offer a brand new challenge for the 2023 European Rally Championship runner-up.
“I think there is a lot of interest from a lot of parties about what he's capable of and, there's a lot of discussion about Latvia, Poland being very similar events, home events and him knowing them well, can it be repeated in some way?" Millener told Autosport.
“I don't want to expect that he could repeat challenging for a podium in Latvia. What we want to see is another rally with no issues and him get to the end with no mistakes and effectively have a good result, which I think could be done by being clever as well.
“The title fight is going to be pretty big and Chile is a pretty tricky rally as well. It is fast and technical I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a couple of accidents.
“If he can get top five again, fantastic, that’s more the goal, so it’s a bit of an extended audition, I guess. But certainly, I’m not in a position to say that he's going to be signing with us for next year. It's just a case of trying to see what else we can do for these junior drivers.
“I think he's already proven what he's capable of and this opportunity come about through M-Sport pushing as well, but also through promoter and Martins with his own thing.
“It's a good opportunity for us to see what throwing a completely new environment at him with not a lot of notice. What he can do and how he approaches it.”
In addition to a set of brand new stages to learn, Sesks is running without hybrid power similar to his debut in Poland. On those fast gravel stages the performance deficit to the hybrid-powered Rally1 cars was minimal, but the deficit is likely to increase on Chile’s technical roads.
“Of course, it will be a big challenge to go to South America and drive a Rally1 car in Chile for the first time,” said Sesks.
“It will be a great adventure I think, something new again and we’re now trying to prepare for the rally. We’re watching the onboards and seeing similar things to some European rallies.
“It will be a bit harder for us driving the non-hybrid car, but again it's an opportunity to show some pace without the hybrid, and if we succeed there it's even better. Our experience from Poland and Latvia in understanding the car will help a lot. It will be a challenge but we’re looking forward to it.”
Sesks isn’t the only rising star being offered a rare Rally1 outing this weekend with Toyota fielding Sami Pajari in one of its four GR Yaris. The Finn has replaced regular Takamoto Katsuta, who will sit out the trip to South America.
