BR Competition is managed by Bartek Rubczewski, a long-time friend and dealer of Samsonas Motorsport in Poland. Bartek is now more focused on rally engineering and has worked a lot around Samsonas-powered cars with some very famous drivers. Nowadays his experience and knowledge is used by world class drivers and teams in WRC and ERC. Bartek tells his story about working with Samsonas Motorsport and his other activities.
Could you tell us the story behind the BR Competition?
The company started around 2010, and after a few years of working for other teams, I started freelance motorsport activities. At the beginning it was quite a lot of mechanics work, then with time it shifted more into engineering. I think some passion for motorsport was always in me, I used to watch rallies together with my father and that’s how it started.
How did the partnership with Samsonas Motorsport started?
It was around 2008 when I was running a Honda Civic for a customer in the rally, the car was bought from Lithuania and had Samsonas gearbox. At some point, we needed some parts and support so I went to Utena where I met Martynas and all the other people. It was easy to see from the beginning we all shared the same passion and dedication, so that’s how our cooperation started.
What is your customer feedback on the Samsonas parts?
It’s always positive, gearboxes are good quality and fair price, so customers are happy. In the beginning, it was a bit more difficult to convince people to buy some relatively unknown brand transmissions from the Baltics, but after a few years the company became well-known in the motorsport world, so it became easier. At the moment people know those are the strongest gearboxes on the market.
What are the current activities of BR Competition?
The main thing is rally engineering, which is at the moment main part of the business. Of course, we still sell Samsonas transmissions and parts for them and also provide support for current customers.
In which areas of the automotive industry does BR Competition work the most? (Various projects, drifting, racing, etc.)
At the moment it’s motorsport engineering, after pandemium mainly focused on rallying in WRC and ERC. Before COVID we used to do a lot of circuit stuff – race engineering, but after the pandemium, it recovered slower and in the meantime, we got busy enough with rally projects. We also help some companies with the development of custom-made projects, we don’t have any direct customers in drifting, we just provide them with gearboxes and some support regarding that.
What are your most important / best known / most famous customers and racing drivers?
It has been quite many during past years, last few seasons we have mainly focused on supporting Sami Pajari in WRC, we also cooperate with quite many young drivers who are not yet well known, but some of them at some point will be noted by a bigger audience. During the past 15 years, we worked also with Mikko Hirvonen, Mads Ostberg, Teemu Asunmaa, and Nico Verdonck. We can’t forget about our “family” members who are super fast on rally stages – Martynas Samsonas and race tracks – Erik Qvick.
What is the situation in the automotive/racing sector in Poland?
The situation is honestly quite difficult… In rallying in the main championship we have only around 30 cars taking part, most cars are FIA R classes, so not our market. Racing and rallycross are basically dead in Poland, we have few customers in each discipline, but with very few cars starting popularity of those events is going down. Drifting was growing nicely a few years ago, but after COVID-19 it’s also not doing so well. Historic rallying/racing does not exist. All this is quite strange for almost 40 million country with a crazy high amount of new road car sales.
Can you perhaps tell us what future projects look like for BR Competition?
Probably we will continue to do a lot of rally engineering, as there is a big demand for it. Also, we will push with Samsonas sales and support to current customers. We hope the situation in the Polish market will change and people will start to build again some proto cars, etc.
