Over 250 kilometres of special stages and thousands of corners on the Mediterranean island around birthplace city of Napoleon Bonaparte. This is the shortest summary of Tour de Corse: the final round of this year’s FIA European Rally Championship. On Thursday, 6th of November, Kajetan Kajetanowicz and Jarek Baran in their LOTOS Rally Team Ford Fiesta R5 will stand up to the challenge among 55 competitors. Just like it was the case with previous rounds of European Championship, Polish crew will tackle this French classic for the first time in their career.

Corsican ERC counter is one of the most famous rallies in the world. Extremely difficult tarmac legend is known as the "Rally of 10,000 corners". Tour de Corse started in 1956 and its significance and popularity grew rapidly, so in 1973 it was included in World Rally Championship calendar, in its first season of running. The famous name "Tour de Corse" refers to the traditional route, running around the island. This year special stages, full of corners, run around Ajaccio – capital city of Corsica – and in south-eastern part of island, around city of Porto-Vecchio.

This year crews taking part in 57th edition of Tour de Corse face the route of 757 kilometres, including 251 kilometres of competitive driving. Eleven special stages of Corsican event are exceptionally long. The shortest opening stage is 14.9 kilometre long and no less than seven stages are longer than 26 kilometres. On the longest one – Acqua Doria-Bellevalle – the crews will fight over distance of 28.26 kilometres. Serious competition will begin on Friday, 7th of November, at 8:31 CET. Before the start, on Thursday morning, the crews will tackle official Qualifying Stage. Finishing ceremony will take place in Ajaccio on Saturday, 8th of November, at 5:30 PM CET.

Before the final round of FIA ERC Kajetanowicz and Baran hold fourth place in championship standings, with their sight set on battle for podium position. Car failure in previous round – Swiss Rallye du Valais – cost them a lot of valuable points and ended their hope for fight for European Rally Championship title in the first season of competition for Kajetanowicz. LOTOS Rally Team is the only team which is able to fight successfully against factory teams and it has been already noticed and appreciated by international media.

Kajetan Kajetanowicz: Tour de Corse is a dream-come-true showdown to our first season in FIA European Championship. It is a legendary classic contested by rally grand masters and now I have a chance to compete and enjoy these extremely complicated stages. We are focused on "Operation Corsica" :-) I suppose that our pace notes will take almost as many pages as during Rallye du Valais. This is a rally of ten thousand corners which only seem to be similar to each other. Fast driving on these confusing stages is never easy when you are here for the first time. Rookies almost always have to accept supremacy of more experienced rivals who know this rally very well. However, I am not disheartened by this because I know that we can learn a lot. Despite car failure on previous rally we are still in contention for podium place. If there is a chance, I always do my best to grasp it. Regardless of our finishing position at the end of the season, we can already say that this year was very successful. All credit for our achievements goes to everybody who is involved in this project.