The Bushwhacker 2025 Rally was great for Samsonas Motorsport team – together with our co-driver Ugnius Vainevičius and our BMW M3 E36 with N5 suspension, team won among 2WD cars and finished 15th overall. Rainy, narrow, very fast and rough roads during night and day were a great challenge and the team, crew and car coped with it especially well. A big part of the result was the help from Euro M-Sport, who supplied great service, fuel and Nova tyres. Martynas Samsonas shares his story about coming back to Northern Ireland.
Less than a week after the successful rally in Finland, the entire team was ready for the start at the other end of Europe – in Northern Ireland. How did you manage to acclimatise and keep up with everything?
Well, because, as I wrote earlier, this car is different. It’s more reliable, stronger, faster, so there’s less work to do with it. That is pleasing. Of course there is work, but it’s more cosmetic. There is nothing to compare with the old BMWs. That’s why it’s easier to make it everything on time.
There’s not much to acclimatise here 🙂 2 hours difference, you can get up 2 hours later 🙂 It seems that the day is longer. All we had to do was fit new Nova tyres, replace fuel and we were ready to go.
The Bushwhacker Rally is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary and to mark the occasion offered a much longer itinerary and two days of action – what is special about this rally?
The special thing, well, is probably the history. Organising a rally here for 50 years is definitely no joke. Of course it’s special to me because of the nature – a completely different nature. In some places it’s simply a jungle. There is not a single house, not a single inhabitant. Nature is green, just moss and forest. The roads – perhaps they remind me a little of Portugal. Winding, twisting over crests, over compressions. Sometimes you have to hold on tight – at one point, I think at 200 km/h, there was such a long descent with a long compression and such a steep climb up the mountain that Ugnius said he felt like everything in his stomach was rising and falling :))))))))
This is the kind of rally that I would say is definitely worth doing once in a lifetime.
After a year’s break, Ugnius Vainevičius returned to the co-drivers seat – how did he cope with the Irish affairs?
Well, Ugnius hasn’t been with me for a year 🙂 Ugnius is a serious, responsible rally worker – champions are not made from soft metal and he is 2025 Lithuania Rally Champion.
And seriously, Ervinas couldn’t make that many trips, so I had a quick word with Ugnius. Ugnius was happy – and so was I. We’d both driven and won quite a lot together. I knew what to expect. The Irish format is different to the Lithuanian, Finnish and Portuguese. That’s why we all helped each other. Ervinas was also involved in the whole process and shared his experience and advice. A good team.
Almost 130 competitors, all classes full, dozens of R5/Rally2s and Ford Escorts – do you feel that the Irish have a very strong rally culture, and the pace is also quite high?
Yes, yes. The rally culture of the Irish is something spectacular. Finland, Ireland and many other countries have similarly strong roots and a similar culture. Well, Ireland really stands out. Even around the world where rallying is popular – whether in the USA or Australia – the Irish lead the way in many places. So everything is particularly strong in their homeland, they all thrive on it. It feels like being a ”rally driver” almost makes you more respected even at the street 🙂 In any case, they are all incredibly friendly – they show up, ask questions, say hello, help. Maybe it’s simply because we are guests – I don’t know. But you can feel this special atmosphere everywhere, not just on the day of the rally, but every day. Rally2 here has almost the highest concentration of any country, in the past even the concentration of WRC cars was definitely the highest in Ireland.
And as for the Escorts, I think the religion was shaken 🙂 There’s an Escort in every garage there. By the way, those Escorts – there are simpler ones, but there are also some that cost 150-170k euros. Millington engines from 320 to 370 hp, weights around 1 tonne. The Lada that drove here is the same Escort, only with a Honda engine with 320 hp and no more than 1000kg. They really fly. They should not be underestimated.
I would say we were a bit lucky that there were 4 night stages on the first day. We were able to attack harder and the surface wasn’t so worn. We also like night stages, we had good lazer lights, so I pushed really hard and pulled out a lead of over 30 seconds. Because I knew the 2WD guys would push pedal to the metal during the day – and they did. What we gained during the night – we simply had to maintain this lead during the day. Because, I don’t think the cars are slower, and these local ‘Indians’ know how to push at home too. We had to work really, really hard. Of course, I really wanted to finish, so I protected the car. I’m getting old 🙂
You are a frequent visitor to the Bushwhacker and Fivemiletown rallies – why?
Well, that’s quite natural because we work a lot with our Euro M-Sport representatives. Rallying is a big part of their work and we do it for them. We are often invited because Omagh Motor Club is a good mutual acquaintance. They organise both rallies. We even organised a rally for several years under the joint name Samsonas Fivemiletown Rally.
The speed stages were driven in both directions by the huge number of cars – how did the special stages hold up and what impact does the fact that hundreds of cars driven them from both sides?
Well, first of all, I suppose I have to say that there aren’t that many gravel roads there, and the forests are private. I think that’s the reason why itinerary was laid out that way. The number of roads is limited, so the next day the stages were reversed – basically, it was new stages, new roads, and everything was good. Also, ruts like the ones we have in Lithuania don’t form even after 600 cars. Roughly speaking, there are many plus points about the roads as well as few minuses. The road clears and ant the line in on like a rock, like concrete, but it’s very rough, sharp, so the tyres wear terribly. On the second day, there were stages after which tyres remained as slicks. And one more nuance – as I said, there are no ruts, but there are very rough, little sharp potholes. Well, we have this phenomenon in Lithuania too, but they are softer and smoother, and here it’s like driving on concrete stairs. So for the entire second day, every time I accelerated through these sections of mini-potholes, I had to either keep the throttle at half speed or drive off the clean part to the side and drive through mud, through loose soil. That didn’t add any speed, of course, but I was determined to save all the axles, propshafts and get to the finish. That’s how we drove – we pushed in some places, but we protected ourselves a bit in others and tried to maintain the lead from the first day.
The last stop of a very intense month awaits you – San Marino and one of the most impressive events – Rally Legend. How did this rally get on the calendar and what do you expect from it?
Oh, I don’t know 🙂 I’m not a fan of such shows… Plus tarmac. Everyone is praising it to the skies, saying it’s going to be great – so I hope it will be great. For me it’s more of a job.
Italy is not our strong market, although we work a lot with historic cars, but not so much that it would be proper and good.
That’s why we met with Paolo Diana this year and discussed how we can be mutually beneficial. He is going to use our sequential gearbox for his new FIAT prototype. We somehow got talking, and Paolo said it would be good if I took part in Rally Legend too. Of course, it was not easy to make a schedule, because we also wanted to participate in Rally Aukštaitija at Zarasai to support the organisers 🙂 But we had to decide, and we decided.
Kalle Rovanpera, whom we have known for 10 years, raced together and continue to work, will also be taking part. Countless other stars will be taking part, as well as our customers like Frank Kelly and many others. So I hope that all this will be useful, that we will have a good time, maybe meet someone and I hope not to make a shame for ourselves. I don’t know what will happen and how it will be… We have 20 used Pirelli tyres with us because there are 10 stages and it looks like we will have to change them somehow after each stage. And we will probably use R17 slicks for the front. It’s going to be interesting nonsense, but maybe it will be good 🙂
