Sesks working on expansion to 2025 WRC programme with M-Sport Ford

Martins Sesks is working to add a seventh round to his partial 2025 World Rally Championship programme with M-Sport-Ford that continues at Rally Portugal this week.

The 2023 European Rally Championship runner-up burst onto the WRC scene last year after a trio of impressive outings for the Ford squad in Poland, his native Latvia and Chile.    

A run to fifth driving a non-hybrid powered Puma in Poland was followed by a pair of stage wins in Latvia, though he then narrowly missed out on a likely maiden podium when a technical fault struck his car on the final stage. 

Sesks’ has since reached a deal to rejoin M-Sport for a six-round campaign that began with a run to sixth in Sweden in February, and will continue in Portugal this week.

The 25-year-old will have further outings in Sardinia, Greece, Estonia and Finland, while working to find a way to add a to be confirmed seventh round to his schedule.

“In total we have six events 100% confirmed but we are really working towards seven because we need to have a half season,” Sesks revealed in the latest episode of the WRC’s Backstories podcast.

“At the beginning of the year I said to the sponsors that we are doing half a year, so either we are dropping one event from the calendar or we do one more event, so I can tell the sponsors we are doing half a season,” he then joked.

Sesks was quick to add that the support already received from sponsors in Latvia has been “amazing” to help make this year’s part-time campaign possible. 

“We are coming from such a small country, 1.8 million total and the market we have here is comparable to some average cities in southern or central Europe,” he said.

“Of course it is not easy to get the amount of contribution for everything. The best we could do was half a season at this point and still everyone was so passionate in Latvia about this programme. This year was just amazing. From that point of view this was the easiest year to get the sponsorship.”

Looking ahead to Portugal’s challenging rough gravel stages, Sesks revealed his approach remains unchanged with his focus firmly on delivering consistency to add to the outright pace he showcased last season. 

“Finishing all the events and getting experience, that is the total aim because if you don’t finish you are not getting experience,” he said.  “We are not doing the full season, so points for us don’t really matter. We are not scoring manufacturer points so again it doesn’t really matter.

“The goal is to be consistent and consistency is key for this year, and then of course if we can put some good stage times in, that works for us.”