Press release Ustroń, 20.08.2019 r.

In 2017, Kajetan Kajetanowicz was the first one in over 60 years of Rally Championships to win three times in a row, going down in the history of European rally sport.

Kajetan Kajetanowicz is a Polish rally driver who competed in the 2017 European Rally Championship for the LOTOS Rally Team. Kajetanowicz was born on March 5th, 1979 in Cieszyn and currently lives in nearby Ustroń, a city situated in the Silesian Voivodeship in the South of Poland. He is a three-time European Rally Champion (2015-2017) and four-time Polish Rally Champion (RSMP) (2010-2013).

In 2016, Kajetanowicz repeated his success from the previous year, winning the European Rally Championship title for the second time in a row. Kajetanowicz’s team - LOTOS Rally Team also triumphed in the Teams' Championships. The Polish driver had his eyes set on the title from the first round of the season - Rally Islas Canarias, where he outperformed World Rally Championship regular Mads Ostberg, who had completed over a hundred WRC races.

In his second outing that season - in Circuit of Ireland - the Pole finished second for the second time in a row. Over the course of the rally, Kajetanowicz turned out to be faster than British Rally Championship regulars and fought with local ace Craig Breen for the win. Kajetanowicz’s chargeback to the points was the standout performance of the extremely difficult Acropolis Rally. His fight paid off- he managed to make up 26 positions and remained the leader of the FIA ERC.

During the exotic Rally Acores, Kajetanowicz took the lead from the beginning and despite being hampered by transmission problems later on; he managed to finish on the podium for the second time in a row. Thanks to a streak of solid results in the first half of the season, Kajetanowicz accumulated 92 points, 15 points ahead of his nearest rival.

Kajetanowicz's debut in the WRC came halfway through the season during his home round of series - Rally Poland. This time the three-time winner came in fourth in the highly competitive WRC2 category.

Following his WRC one-off, Kajetanowicz successfully returned to the competition in the FIA ERC, finishing in second place on stunningly quick gravel stages of Rally Estonia. At the beginning of August, the LOTOS Rally Team driver dominated his home round of the championship - Rajd Rzeszowski. Nearly 1100 days since his last race in the event, ‘Kajto’ was in a class of his own, beating both Polish front-runners as well as the four-time rally winner Bryan Bouffier. The championship leader took a commanding win in the Subcarpathia region, winning eight out of 13 special races and scoring 39 out of 39 possible points. During Barum Rally Zlín, Kajetanowicz was set to repeat his brilliant result achieved in the 2015 edition of the event and despite suffering some engine problems, he managed to finish a brilliant second.

Over the course of the season, the Polish driver showed an impressive combination of pace and consistency, winning 29 out of 103 (28%) special stages he started this year. Even more impressively, he finished 71 special stages in top three (69%).

The same year Kajetanowicz was awarded the Fair-Play award by the Polish Olympic Committee for the sportsmanship he presented during Barum Rally Zlín. The Pole noticed that a fellow competitor suffered a serious looking accident that was over- looked by others who passed by. Kajetanowicz sacrificed his stage time and stopped by the crashed car to check if the driver and co-driver were all right.

In 2015, Kajetanowicz won the FIA ERC crown for the first time. He started his route with a commanding win in the Janner Rally where he crushed the opposition. He also showed good pace a month later, during - held in the wintertime - Rally Liepāja- Ventspils in Latvia. In his debut in Circuit of Ireland, he finished second, only behind local ace Craig Breen. In May, the Polish driver secured a podium finish in Rally Acores. An important point in the season was Kajetanowicz’s impressive debut on fast gravel stages of Rally Estonia.

Kajetanowicz started the second part of the season on a high rise, with third place in the Barum Rally Zlín, an event that tradi- tionally has the strongest entry list of the season. The last two rallies of the season turned out to be a triumphant knockout - first on the twisty routes of Cyprus and then at the iconic Acropolis Rally - that sealed the FIA ERC title for Kajetanowicz and his co- driver Jarek Baran. The LOTOS Rally Team duo secured the biggest success of their career, showing style and pace that left spectators worldwide highly impressed.

Kajetanowicz and Baran impressed especially with efficiency - the Poles won valuable points in every single rally. Moreover, they have finished as many as seven of eight rounds of the Championships on the podium, three of which - Janner Rally, Cy- prus Rally and Acropolis Rally - have won.

Kajetanowicz and Baran are only the third Poles to win the FIA ERC. Kajetanowicz’s success is a link to other historic triumphs of great Polish rally drivers, that is Sobieslaw Zasada’s three titles in the 60s and 70s as well as the sole title won by Krzysztof Hołowczyc in 1997. At the end of 2015, Kajetanowicz reached his third career triumph in the prestigious Warsaw Barbórka Rally and won the legendary Criterion of Aces (Kryterium Asów) held on Karowa Street in the heart of the Polish capital.