It is a busy time in Latvia when viewed through the prism of the rally. It seems that the “Rallijs Sarma” has just finished and the rally community has once again traveled to the north of the country. Only this time, not to Gulbene, but to Alūksne. The rally, which was supposed to take place at the end of January, was postponed to the end of February because there was not enough snow and ice at that time to organize the winter rally. This decision was extremely fortunate – the weather prior to this rally weekend was both cold and snowy. Both the participants and the guests enjoyed the huge amounts of snow and the excellently frozen roads. No less than eight crews from Lithuania came to this winter rally festival. Two of them, representatives of N5 class – Rokas Steponavičius / Karolis Gedgaudas with Ford Fiesta N5 and Vilmantas Padegimas / Edvardas Gurevičius with Renault Clio N5. For Rokas it was the third competition with the new car, for Vilmants even the fourth this year.
The most important events of the rally began late Friday night, when the participants covered the 12.54-kilometer route twice in the dark. However, not all of them started on Friday. The itinerary for the Latvian Rally Sprint participants was shorter and the competition started only on Saturday morning. Vilmantas Padegimas started with Edvard Gurevičius in the Latvian Rally Sprint class, as Edvardas license currently only allows driving in this competition. On Friday evening, the competitors were welcomed not only by darkness with fog, but also by a lot of loose snow on the road, which severely affected traction. After the night tests, the crew of Rokas Steponavičius and Karolis Gedgaudas finished 14th overall and third in the “LARC1” class with the Ford Fiesta N5.
At dawn, Saturday offered participants four more different special stages, each run twice. If Friday’s action took place south of Alūksnė, half of Saturday’s special stges took place almost on the Latvian-Estonian border, the other half around Lake Alūksnė. Their length is between six and twelve kilometers. On the second day of the rally, participants of the Latvian Rally Sprint were also on the starting line, including Vilmantas Padegimas with Edvardas Gurevičius. Unfortunately, the first special stage on Saturday went very wrong for lithuanians. Vilmantas arrived in Latvia only on Friday afternoon due to a serious business matter. As a result, the quality of reece decreased, and when driving at race pace, errors appeared in the pacenotes in the ugliest form. The slight right turn after the jump was not marked in the pacenotes, which caused the Renault Clio N5 running at full speed to get stuck and roll in snow. Fortunately, there was a large group of people at the site who not only put the car on its wheels, but also pulled it out of the fluffy snow on the road. After assessing the minor cosmetic damage, the crew continued the race. An unscheduled stop on the special stage caused a delay at the time control, resulting in the crew being penalized and removed from the final results sheets, despite having successfully completed the entire course. Vilmantas was not too sad, as it was just a training session for him to work with a new co-driver and get to know the Renault Clio N5 even better.
It was much better for another Lithuanian team of class N5, which had set the same goals as Vilmantas – to train and get to know the new car better. Rokas and Karolis drove Saturday’s special stages very maturely and calmly, improving their times in the sections they drove for the second time. In the eighth stage, the Lithuanian crew was in the top ten overall, and in the ninth stage they even achieved the sixth best time. This allowed the Lithuanian Ford Fiesta N5 to fight with the more advanced and faster Škoda Fabia R5 of the “LARC1” class with increased restrictor. However, a mistake in the last stage, which was already covered by darkness, did not allow him to go beyond third place in the “LARC1” class. In the overall standings, Rokas and Karolis remained in twelfth place, and together it was already the third rally they completed this winter with the newly acquired Ford Fiesta N5.It can already be said that the representative of “GSR Motorsport” Rokas Steponavičius will cause problems for more than one fast racer in the summer.
It seems that this competition was the end of the winter season in our region. Now we are looking forward to the coming spring and summer, which will be full of events. While we wait for the arrival of warm weather in Lithuania, as many as 5 Lithuanian crews with N5 equipment will travel to the south – a distant Spain at the end of March, where they will participate in the “Rally da Auga”.
| Driver | Co-Driver | Car | Team | Class | Time | Overall | Class | |||
 | Rokas Steponavičius | | Karolis Gedgaudas |  | Ford Fiesta N5 | GSR Motorsport | LARC1 | 54:23.06 | 12 | 3 |
| Vilmantas Padegimas | | Edvardas Gurevičius |  | Renault Clio N5 | Samsonas Motorsport | RK8 (L10) | 51:55:00 | – | – |
Photos – Raimonds Volonts, Motors & Sports, Fotodarius.lt