Last weekend, the traditional conclusion of the rally season in the Baltic States took place on the island of Saaremaa, which was the last event of the Estonian Rally Championship. As this rally is one of the best known in the Baltic States, there was, as always, a large field of participants. Around 150 cars competed, from the latest FIA machines to the legendary GAZ trucks.
Among these hundreds of participants were two MV Sport Hyundai i20s equipped with a Subaru sequential gearbox and gravel dampers from Samsonas Motorsport. The first starting number went to Egon Kaur and Allan Birjukov, driving a Hyundai i20 VRT with PSA 1.6 engine, and the 10th starting number went to Emils Blūms and Didzis Eglitis, driving a Hyundai i20 VRT with Mitsubishi 2.0 engine.
The rally began on Friday evening with two mostly tarmac stages, and before the day ended, there was a cross-track stage with parallel runs. Unfortunately, Friday did not go so perfectly for the Estonian and Latvian crews, as Egon Kaur suffered a puncture due to an anti-cutting device and Emils Blūms had a time-consuming spin.
However, Saturday, which consisted of three stages run twice over the legendary roads of Kaugotoma and Undva, went far better. Egon Kaur with Allan Birjukov set the top 3 times straight away and made it to third place overall, where the crew finished. They also took second place in the EMV1 class. The teammate for this rally – Emils Blūms – had a slightly more complicated Saturday. Emils also set promising times driving a 2.0-powered MV Sport car for the first time, but a 1-minute penalty for checking in too early dashed their hopes of a good finish.
Most importantly, both cars finished and the unique MV Sport double wishbone suspension with Samsonas Motorsport dampers worked perfectly in changing weather and surface conditions, while Egon finished on the overall rally podium.
