This Thursday, August 22nd 2013, two Polish rally teams supported by Grupa LOTOS – Michał Kościuszko and Maciek Szczepaniak from the LOTOS Rally Team, and Robert Kubica and Maciek Baran – will compete in the Rallye Deutschland, the ninth round of the 2013 World Rally Championship.

The rally will be particularly important to Robert Kubica, who ranks third in this year’s WRC-2 general classification, only two points from second place and 17 behind the leader.

After three gravel rallies in which Robert Kubica secured podium positions in his category (with two wins, in the Rally Sardegna and the Acropolis Rally), the Polish racer will once again be competing on asphalt. The Rallye Deutschland is the first round in this year’s WRC calendar during which he will be doing so. Earlier, in March, Robert had the opportunity to compete on the asphalt roads of the Rally Islas Canarias, when he drove a Citroen DS3 RRC in LOTOS colours during the European Rally Championship. On the first day of that rally, Kubica was unrivalled, finishing more than one minute ahead of his competitors.

In the other car, Michał Kościuszko and Maciek Szczepaniak are returning to the WRC after a two-month break. Recently, the team won a high seventh place in the general classification of the Rally Sardegna, despite it being their debut behind the wheel of the Ford Fiesta WRC. The Rallye Deutschland, which starts this thursday, will be the LOTOS Rally Team's seventh start in this year’s WRC meetings.

“On Sunday we tested our car on both wet and dry surfaces. This is an extremely important experience, as that was the first time we had driven our WRC car on an asphalt surface. Thanks to the support of our partner, Grupa LOTOS, we will be running in a Ford Fiesta WRC in Germany,” Michał Kościuszko said. “The Rallye Deutschland involves three different types of courses, from winding vineyard roads, military training grounds with concrete and asphalt surfaces and dangerous tank barriers, to high-speed sections similar to those on the asphalt roads of Catalonia. Even though last year we won this rally in the PWRC category, this year we decided to start our notes from square one, which means we will have to get busy during the reconnaissance run.”

For the first time since the Rallye Deutschland became a WRC calendar event in 2002, the rally will be starting in Cologne with a presentation of the cars and crews in the Roncalliplatz. On the way back from Cologne to Trier, the crews will complete the first two special stages, the second of which, in the vicinity of Sauteral, will be covered by most of them after dark.

On Friday, the competitors will be haring along the winding vineyard roads of the Moselle river, which have a total length of about 131 special stage kilometres. For Saturday, the organisers have a traditionally planned rivalry within a military training ground, where the 41 kilometre long Arena Panzerplatte special stage has been prepared for the racers. All together, the second day of the rally will see the teams completing six special stages with a total length of nearly 154 kilometres. The last two special stages will be run at the end of the Rallye Deutschland, on Sunday.
 
During the four days of the ADAC Rallye Deutschland, competitors will cover a total of 1,243.34 kilometres, including 16 special stages with a total length of 371.86 special stage kilometres.

The LOTOS 70th Rally Poland, which has been traditionally held on the gravel roads of the Masuria region in the vicinity of Mikołajki, will be another outing in which Michał Kościuszko, Robert Kubica and Kajetan Kajetanowicz – the three drivers supported by Grupa LOTOS – will meet. This round of the LOTOS Polish Rally Championship is also a European Rally Championship (ERC) calendar event.

Grupa LOTOS is the Official Partner of Robert Kubica and the strategic partner of the LOTOS Rally Teams of Michał Kościuszko and Maciek Szczepaniak, and Kajetan Kajetanowicz and Jarek Baran.

For more information on Robert Kubica and the LOTOS Rally Team's results, visit our Facebook page “Emocje do Pełna” (Emotions to the Full) at http://www.facebook.com/EmocjeDoPelna,  or at http://www.lotosrallyteam.pl

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